Sacramento Kings: When will they be released from NBA purgatory?
By Eric Saar
The Sacramento Kings haven’t made the playoffs in the super competitive Western Conference since the 2005-06 season. That was when Peja Stojakovic, Chris Webber and Doug Christie were in the league. It’s been a while. Sacramento has never won more than 38 games since, and have been a cellar-dweller in NBA purgatory.
They’ve continued to go through a turnstile of coaches and had some turmoil recently as a new owner bought the team.
This last summer, the Kings didn’t want to keep the electric Isaiah Thomas and handed him to the Phoenix Suns for basically nothing, instead signing former Los Angeles Clippers backup Darren Collison. To me that seems like a head-scratching move.
Roster
DeMarcus Cousins is the foundation of the team. He is sort of emotional on the court, gets frustrated easily, but has loads of talent. He is one of the best centers in this league and he’s not even in his prime yet. Behind Cousins are Reggie Evans, Ryan Hollins and the 7’5” Sim Bhullar. They won’t play very many minutes, though Evans will probably play backup to Cousins for the few minutes he isn’t on the court.
At power forward, they have Jason Thompson, Carl Landry and Derrick Williams, who are all at about the same talent level with different strengths along with the bench warmer Eric Moreland.
At small forward, the Kings only have a couple options with Rudy Gay coming off his experience with Team USA following Paul George’s brutal injury, as a replacement. The backup is Omri Casspi.
At shooting guard are Sacramento’s recent draft picks. Starting is Ben McLemore from 2013 and backing him up is 2014 pick Nik Stauskas.
The aforementioned Darren Collison is the starting point guard with veteran Ramon Sessions and Ray McCallum in his second year as the backups.
Strengths & Weaknesses
You know you have a transcendent player or just a lot of other bad ones if one player leads your team in most of the statistical categories. Cousins led the team last season in points, rebounds, steals and blocks per game while Isaiah Thomas (who isn’t there anymore) led them in assists. Some other players are going to have to step up if Sacramento is going to get to the next level.
The Kings were last in assists in 2013-14, probably because they relied so much on dropping the ball in the post to Cousins so heavily, along with bad ball movement. That is going to have to change. They were 17th in points per game which is probably about where they’ll end up this season. Maybe a few spots higher.
Their problem is defense. Sacramento was 24th in the league in points allowed. If you want to make some noise in the NBA you are going to have to get stops.
Attitude
The Kings have a feeling of rejuvenation. They have new, seemingly more competent, owners. The threat of relocation is gone and a new arena is in the works, though the early stages. Now they just need some hope with the roster.
Other than with Cousins and the likes of McLemore and Stauskas (because we don’t know much about them) there doesn’t seem to be much upside on the roster. They seem like competent players who will win some games, but don’t have much, if any, real hope for big games. They will need those big games to overcome other big time performances from opposing players if they are to win games. It’s as simple as that.
Eventually, they will be bad enough to draft a player good enough to turn their fortunes around. That time is not now.
Predictions
In the best case scenario (for this year), everyone plays above their perceived potential, including Cousins at an All-Star level. This elevates the Kings to better than the Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets, Utah Jazz and maybe even the Memphis Grizzlies and Houston Rockets. They still wouldn’t make the playoffs, but would be closer than they have been.
The worst possible scenario is a regression by Cousins, and they are the worst team in the conference.
An interesting best scenario (for the future) is Cousins suffers an injury that doesn’t hurt his future, but sidelines him for the year. This enables Sacramento to hold a high draft pick while having Cousins waiting in the wings. Because right now, Cousins is just good enough to keep them from getting a good draft pick.
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