3 ways to fix the Sacramento Kings (again)

Good morning. The Sacramento Kings are again embarrassing themselves, losing to the East's worst squad to fall four games under .500 with 10 days to go and risking a miss of the play-in tournament. Plus, other games were played. Let's basketball.

Merely being locked in a battle for two play-in spots with the Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks is already a failure for the Sacramento Kings. The Suns have had one of the most disappointing seasons in modern NBA history and the Mavericks traded a generational superstar for an older top-tier player who immediately got injured, and then had their other star also get injured. And yet, the Kings – who have been one of the healthier teams in the league again – might be left out of the play-in.

Sacramento fired its coach – a recent winner of Coach of the Year – amid some uninspiring play. Then it traded its star point guard, who became moderately disgruntled when being blamed for the coach's dismissal in the void left by the front office and ownership's refusal to talk to the media. The trade brought back a similar if slightly less productive player at a less important position who makes $10 million more per season and is three years older, plus some future draft picks. And then the play just less inspiring, as if that was possible.

After losing to the Washington Wizards (the Kings of the East), Sacramento is now four games under .500. When Mike Brown was fired, the team was five games under .500. Improvement! Two years after being the No. 3 seed, the Kings' best-case scenario for the season is getting inordinately hot in the play-in tournament and getting swept by the younger, cheaper, infinitely better Thunder in Round 1. The worst-case scenario is missing out on the play-in entirely. The most likely scenario is getting in and getting eliminated by the laughingstock Mavericks, and suffering ridicule at the hands of the Inside the NBA crew.

So how do you fix this team? Here are three ideas.

1. Get a point guard and a new head coach. It's hilarious that a few years ago this team had De'Aaron Fox and Tyrese Haliburton, and had to trade one of them thinking they couldn't carry two Point Guards of the Future into the future. Haliburton netted Domantas Sabonis, who has legitimately been the best player on the Kings ever since but is a flawed modern centerpiece. But now Fox is gone, too. Keon Ellis is the nominal starting point guard right now. This newsletter is written by perhaps the world's pre-eminent Keon Ellis fan. However, Keon Ellis has a single-digit assist percentage this season. Two-thirds of his makes are assisted by other players. He is not a point guard on offense, and neither is Malik Monk. So DeMar DeRozan and Sabonis are left running the offense, and uh, DeMar DeRozan (a beautiful soul) and Domantas Sabonis (a beautiful soul) are not exactly compatible offensive players. It just doesn't flow, despite Sacramento's status as the No. 8 offense in the NBA, which has felt like a typo all season. This team desperately needs a point guard to organize the offense and keep it humming in clutch situations. Meanwhile, Haliburton is the NBA's reigning assist king and an All-NBA point guard for a team that made the Eastern Conference finals last season. Hmph. Meanwhile, on the coaching front: if the front office was pressured to replace Brown, and the plan was to prove Doug Christie did not have it? Mission freaking accomplished. Go hire Taylor Jenkins, please. It worked out really well the last time Sacramento hired a fired Grizzlies coach.
2. Dissolve the current front office, hire a new GM and let them reboot the roster fully. There are no sacred cows on this roster. Brown pushed Keegan Murray to become a two-way player, and Murray has actually become a plus defender. That might be his limit. Also, his offense has suffered in response – he's clearly exhausted much of the time, and he's only shooting 35% from deep. He needs to be a 40% three-point shooter to be a high-level two-way player. Sabonis tries really hard on defense and might be the best rebounder in the league. But the range isn't developing (he's basically given up on it in-game) and try as he might, he's not a rim protector in any circumstances. DeRozan – again, a beautiful soul – is winding down his career. LaVine's pop witnessed this season in Chicago hasn't translated; he was basically untradable last summer, and his play in Sacramento is similar to his play in Chicago last season, before the summer in which he was untradable. Keeping Monk in free agency felt like a huge victory; Monk absent a successful team around him is just sometimes nice. He could be a legend on a top-flight team; he's featured a little too much on this squad. There is no one on this roster that anyone should cry over losing provided the price was right. There's no superstar-in-waiting here. (Fox wasn't one either, to be clear.) The core issue is that no one trusts the current front office, which has mismanaged the roster entirely since the surprise playoff run in 2022-23, to fix it. You'd rather the team stay the course until Monte McNair, bless his heart, is replaced.
3. Move the franchise to Seattle and grant Sacramento an expansion franchise. Hear me out. Seattle desperately tried to poach the Kings 12 years ago. The relocation was famously on the goal line! David Stern halted it with help from (ahem) the people of Sacramento, including disgraced former mayor Kevin Johnson and yes, Vivek Ranadive. You know what? Seattle shouldn't wait another day for an NBA team. The Kings are yours! We'll take the next expansion team in 2028 or 2029. That will give Sacramentans a nice break for mediocre basketball, a chance to refresh and maybe even support Mike Bibby in his quest to make Sacramento State basketball awesome. And hell, it's probably the right karmic move since the Kings organization and many Sacramento sports fans are gleefully supporting John Fisher's disgusting relocation of the Oakland Athletics. Sure, the NBA is straight-up terrible to its expansion teams. The Charlotte Hornets are still awful 20 years later. But guess what? It's also been 20 years since the Kings had a sustainably good team. Giving the Kings to Seattle and claiming Basketball Bankruptcy in Sacramento could give fans a clean slate, a fresh start, new ownership, a new front office, a new roster, maybe even eventually some hope. There are plenty of Disney on Ice shows or monster truck rallies or, uh, high school graduations we can stick in Golden 1 Center until the Expansion Kings arrive. Zach LaVine will look great in Sonics green.

Who has more ideas to fix the Kings? Drop a comment.

Scores

Kings 111, Wizards 116 | Box Score

Hornets 105, Pacers 119 | Box Score | The Pacers are officially having fun out there.

Jogging backwards is a great hamstring exercise!

Knicks 105, Cavaliers 124 | Box Score | Oh, New York. They are definitely going into the playoffs with their failures against the league's elite heavy on their fans' minds. Such a bummer because, again, this is the best Knicks team of the millennium, and perhaps one of the most fun Knicks teams in 50 years. I truly hope the playoffs are enjoyable despite the impending doom! Being awesome is great, even if you're not the most awesome.

Jarrett Allen is hilarious.

Heat 124, Celtics 103 | Box Score | Boston loses its second game since the beginning of March. The Heat have won six straight!

Jazz 105, Rockets 143 | Box Score | Utah leads the league in losses of at least 35 points this season with six. Congratulations?

Hawks 118, Mavericks 120 | Box Score | Well, Anthony Davis is literally winning games for the Mavericks. He hits the (impossible) go-ahead shot with a few seconds left and forces a Trae Young airball at the buzzer.

Helluva player. Next season will be interesting.

Spurs 113, Nuggets 106 | Box Score | Russell Westbrook was the only Nugget in the top seven in minutes per game who played. I understand rest on back-to-backs after a double-OT game, and Jamal Murray is just plain out right now. But committing yourself to lose a game the night after losing a game in a vicious playoff race is weird. Especially since Michael Malone is always bragging about how many games his superstar plays.

Pistons 103, Thunder 119 | Box Score | It's an 11-game win streak. Remember, OKC needs to finish on a 17-game win streak to become the third team all-time to win 70 games in a season. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander now has 48 games with 30 or more points this season, ahead of Giannis Antetokounmpo with 37. No one else has more than 28.

Pelicans 98, Clippers 114 | Box Score | L.A. joins the 44-win club with some light work over the dilapidated Pels. Which leads us to ...

Playoff Picture Update

One more win and Houston can't finish under No. 5. Incredible season.

Four teams with 44 wins. The Warriors have one more game than the others, but also the hardest schedule.

It's almost time to pull the Pacers out of this race. They are very, very likely to be the No. 4 seed.

And since I'm committed to the bit ...

The Mavericks are now 98% to make the play-in on Playoff Status.

Schedule

All times Eastern. Important games get asterisks.

Magic at Wizards, 7*
Bucks at Sixers, 7*
Timberwolves at Nets, 7:30*
Grizzlies at Heat, 7:30, TNT**
Blazers at Raptors, 7:30
Warriors at Lakers, 10, TNT*** – might be the biggest game of the week after MIN-DEN the other night

Be excellent to each other.