Kings Report

The Sacramento Kings season has come to an end. The first Play-in Tournament game against the Dallas Mavericks, for which the Kings earned home-court advantage, could not have gone worse. The game was close in the first quarter, but in the second quarter, everyone’s biggest fear came true: Mavs guard Klay Thompson caught fire. Thompson looked like he was having the night of his life; the Mavs outscored the Kings 44-19 in the second quarter, and they never recovered from that 23-point deficit. The Kings did shoot well in the second half, but you can’t overcome a deficit if you don’t get any stops, and stops they did not get.

The box score is interesting, though. The Kings and Mavs actually made the same number of total field goals, and the Mavs only made one more three-pointer than the Kings, but where the Mavs really killed the Kings was in free throws; the Kings were playing sloppy defense, and the Mavs outscored the Kings 24-11 at the line. The game was horrible all around; fans were booing, the players looked defeated, and it was a bad end to a disappointing season. But the Kings didn’t really deserve to make the playoffs and crashing and burning just makes more sense with the way this season has gone.

What’s next for the Kings? Well, the team wasted no time in firing General Manager, Monty McNair, someone who was praised just three years ago for picking up Domantas Sabonis (who worked great with De’Aaron Fox), for drafting Keegan Murray, and for taking the Kings to the playoffs that one glorious year we were No. 3 in the West (can we please have another good year so we can stop talking about how great we were three years ago??).

McNair has already been replaced by longtime front office executive Scott Perry, who has spent 25 years in the front office of various teams in the NBA. Perry will probably have a say on whether the Kings keep Doug Christie on as head coach. Everyone seems to love Christie, and he looks to have a pretty good chance of getting the job. After the Kings’ loss, Christie had this to say on the head coaching job, “This is where I want to be. I think you guys know that. I need to finish what I started… when you hear the narratives that are written by people who are not here, who just have random stuff to say, it irks me. Because they don’t know, this is an incredible fan base, it’s an incredible organization.”

Will the Kings try again with Sabonis, Zach LaVine, and DeMar DeRozan, or will we see some roster shakeups next season? These are all questions to which we’ll have to wait to know the answers. As they say, there’s always next year.