Once again, I bring you the same news I have brought you every week this season: the Sacramento Kings are a bad team.
They’re not a good team. Nope, not a mediocre team. They’re not a team of talent that just doesn’t “gel”; they’re just bad. The offense? It’s bad. The Defense? It’s bad. Every aspect of this team is bad. There aren’t even other words to use to describe them.
I could list out all the synonyms for “bad” that I can find, but those words would just be special words for the least-special team I have ever seen. After yet another demoralizing, blowout loss, this time to Memphis, the Kings fell to 3-13.
The good news? They are on pace to be better than the 2011-12 Charlotte Bobcats, who won 7 total games in a lockout-shortened season.
I could spend more time sitting here talking about how, unlike those Bobcats, the 2026 draft isn’t a draft like 2012, when it was the Anthony Davis sweepstakes. There are multiple good prospects I’ve discussed before, but why would I discuss that 15 games into the season? NBA seasons are long and grueling. We will be subjected to bad basketball for another 5 months before the end of the regular season. Unfortunately, this team has problems that cannot be fixed in 5 months or during the offseason. This is a team that will have to endure years of losing before it can even have a chance at a competent roster again.
Credit: Sacramento Kings-Twitter/XKeegan Murray is back, that’s good! Sabonis is out for 3-4 weeks minimum, that’s bad. Keon Ellis is on the trade block. I honestly don’t know if that’s good or bad. He’s probably our most valuable piece to trade, but he’s also young enough that he could be a part of the future core. Regardless, the fact that he’s on the trade block HOPEFULLY means a rebuild is coming. Not a light rebuild, not trading Ellis for a few pieces, but a complete demolition.
There is no “give and take” this year; there’s no longer a bright side. I am a sicko, so I will be watching the games I can, but I will pay attention to every single one. Why? Who knows? Why does any fan watch a bad team? I want to remember these seasons as best I can. I want to experience the lowest lows, and I want them burned into my memory. At some point in the future, not soon, but at some point, the Kings will be good again. That’s how sports work. Every team you can possibly think of as “the worst” in any league has a period of time where they’re good.
When that happens to the Kings, I want to remember how I feel right now.
How I feel is that everything that was good has been taken away by ownership, and the front office has completely soiled itself after one good season. I want to remember how I feel now that we are the league’s retirement home, just going through the motions. I want to remember the complete apathy of winning and losing.
One day, the Kings will make a surprise run. Maybe not to the Finals. Maybe just to the conference finals. Hell, maybe even to the second round. When that happens, we will all remember this season.
As fans of a franchise that brought the term “basketball hell” to life, we have never been closer to Dante’s Inferno. The day we rise from the ashes, we all deserve to remember this.
Time is an illusion, everything is always the same, nothing ever changes, and everything is a cycle.
The happiness will return in time, but don’t wait up.
