Can the Sacramento Kings Escape the NBA’s Maddening Middle?

Getty Images/Ringer illustration The bar has been raised in Sacramento. Will this version of the Kings be able to reach it? Or will adjustments need to be made after the team plateaued this season? A critical offseason lies ahead. On the night the Sacramento Kings notched their 45th win of the 2022-23 season, hoots and hollers and the clang of cowbells filled the air at their shimmering downtown arena. A familiar chant boomed. The resurgent Kings were close to securing their first playoff berth in 17 years. A cascade of awards was coming: All-NBA for De'Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis, Coach of the Year for Mike Brown, Executive of the Year for Monte McNair. With every win, a brilliant torrent of purple light would shoot into the Sacramento skies. Light! The! Beam! Light! The! Beam! "It's lit, all right!" Kings play-by-play man Mark Jones exclaimed as time ticked down in a victory over the Utah Jazz at the Golden 1 Center. The vibes were immaculate. "It was exhilarating," Fox said, looking back. The building was booming again earlier this month, with the Kings again hovering at 45 wins in the final days of the 2023-24 regular season. But the vibes were, uh, different. "Somebody's thrown something on the floor!" TNT's Kevin Harlan exclaimed as time ticked down during a Kings loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on April 11. "It's a chicken wing! Why would someone throw something that good out on the floor?!" Harlan's mock indignation paled in comparison to the exasperation surrounding him. There would be no joy that night, no hoots or chants or purple laser beams—just a lot of muttering and scattered boos as the Kings sputtered toward season's end. "I mean, it's definitely different," Fox, speaking hours earlier, had said of the Kings' weirdly lackluster sequel. And now it's over. That same Pelicans team—minus injured star Zion Williamson —bulldozed the Kings again last Friday in the play-in finale, ending Sacramento's streak of playoff appearances at (sigh) one. The beam was last seen being packed in dry ice, gone till November. "It's a little tough right now," Brown told reporters afterward. At a glance, it's all a bit disorienting. The Kings won 46 games this season—just two fewer than they did a year ago. Fox and Sabonis were just as electrifying. The roster was largely the same, albeit dented by late-season injuries to Malik Monk and Kevin Huerter. Nothing really changed … except expectations. And, well, the entire landscape of the Western Conference. The Oklahoma City Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves made quantum leaps. The Los Angeles Clippers and Pelicans got healthy in the second half. The Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Lakers, and Phoenix Suns got reinforcements. The Denver Nuggets stayed the Denver Nuggets. A year ago, 48 wins meant a third-place finish, a profound sense of accomplishment, of an arrival. This year, 46 wins meant a ninth-place finish, relegation to the play-in tournament, and a strange sense of regression, as if the Kings had somehow slipped—though nothing had really changed. "We definitely feel like we're a way better team than last year, in every aspect," Sabonis told The Ringer earlier this month. Yet, he quickly acknowledged, "It's been a bit of a bumpier road." Welcome, Sacramento, to the NBA's Maddening Middle, where progress is painstaking, exhilaration is fleeting, and objects in the mirror are often closer than they appear. If the Kings were a fictional 1970s rock band, they'd be Stillwater—a mid-level band struggling with their own limitations in the harsh face of stardom. The truth is, making the leap from bad to good in the NBA is, relatively speaking, the easy part—even if the Kings stubbornly defied this adage for more than a decade. Hit one lottery pick (like Fox), and you gain hope. Hit a second lottery pick (like Tyrese Haliburton, whom the Kings later traded for Sabonis), and you're on your way to respectability and win totals in the mid-to-high 40s. But making the leap from good to great? That's a much, much tougher task. Ask the Atlanta Hawks, who returned to relevance after drafting Trae Young in 2018, made a surprise run to the 2021 conference finals, and haven't been out of the first round since. Or ask the previous iteration of the Hawks, who averaged 45 wins from 2008 to 2017 and made the playoffs every spring—but reached just one conference finals (and got swept by LeBron James). Ask the Damian Lillard–era Trail Blazers, or the Donovan Mitchell–era Jazz, or the John Wall–era Wizards, or the Grit and Grind Grizzlies. Or ask the Houston Rockets, who flirted with greatness throughout the James Harden era, routinely won 50-plus games (including a 65-win season), and still had only a pair of conference finals losses to show for it. Or ask Monte McNair, a key member of the Rockets brain trust who is now running the Kings as president of basketball operations. "I've been in the West for 17 years now," McNair said between sips of a latte outside his favorite downtown coffee joint, where the day's menu featured a "Light the Beam Blend" pour-over. "And it's always like this." Like this, meaning the maddening glut of good-to-great teams and generational stars in the West, which at present features LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, and, oh yeah, reigning champ (and likely MVP) Nikola Jokic. Five teams in the West won 50-plus games this season, and five others won at least 46. Had the Kings repeated their 48-win record, they'd have finished eighth and still landed in the play-in tournament. Had they reached 50—the conventional measure of a top-tier team—they'd have tied for only fifth. And 46? Well, for Sacramento fans, it somehow felt like a terrible letdown, competitively and emotionally. (Never mind that, just two years ago, the Kings won 30 games.) "It's night and day," said Carmichael Dave, a longtime fan who also hosts a morning sports talk show on Sactown Sports 1140, the Kings' flagship station. "Last year, we broke an all-time streak, 16 years of missing the playoffs, and it was tears of joy ... just this huge, citywide exhale, like, We're relevant again." And now? "It's just been an incredibly disappointing year at times." That a winning record and a play-in appearance feel like failure shows just how far the Kings have come since McNair and his staff arrived in late 2020. In his first draft, McNair selected Haliburton at no. 12, a pick that was instantly labeled the steal of the draft. Fourteen months later, McNair swapped the still-developing Haliburton for Sabonis, an established two-time All-Star. Four months after that, McNair drafted Keegan Murray, who would set the NBA rookie record for 3-pointers made (206) and make the All-Rookie first team while helping propel the Kings' resurgence. Even though they lost in the play-in, the core of a high-level playoff team is now in place with plenty of room to grow, which is more than the Kings could say for about a decade and a half. Sabonis is 27, Fox is 26, and Murray is only 23. But McNair senses the discontent in Sacramento—and he gets it. "We knew the expectations were coming for us right away," McNair said. "That's what we've seen this year. And that's the reality of the NBA. For us, it's trying to figure out: How do we continue to take those next steps? And that means getting back into the playoffs and eventually winning a round or two." But about that so-called easy leap from bad to good ... "I would push back on the 'easy' first step," McNair said with a smile. "I think it was difficult." But yes, he admitted, the next steps are harder. Progress in this league is rarely linear, at the player or team level. In a time of rampant parity, even steady evolution might not show up in the standings. And the thing is, the Kings did evolve this season. Murray bumped up his scoring and showed signs of becoming a top wing defender. Monk was the leading candidate for Sixth Man of the Year before spraining his knee in late March. Second-year undrafted guard Keon Ellis began emerging as an impact 3-and-D player, providing steady play after the Kings lost Monk and Huerter (shoulder). Fox set a career high in scoring (26.6 points) and led the league in steals (two per game). Sabonis led the league in triple-doubles (26), double-doubles (77), and rebounds per game (13.7) while averaging a career-high 8.2 assists—the sixth-best mark in the league. And, lest it be forgotten, the Kings absolutely thrashed the Golden State Warriors in a play-in game last week, which at least partially avenged their seven-game loss to the Warriors last postseason. On the downside, the Kings never looked quite as potent as they did a year ago. Their offensive rating dropped from first in the league to 13th. Their defense ranked 14th—a huge improvement from last season (24th), but still only mediocre, and not enough to offset their offensive slippage. And, for reasons no one can quite explain, the Kings were at their worst when sitting on a big lead. They lost eight games that they had led by at least 15 points. They blew more 20-point leads (four) than any other team in the league, including two in the final weeks of the regular season (to the Knicks and Thunder). Just holding on in those four games would have meant a 50-win season and likely a higher seed. If there's a tiny bit of consolation in all of this, it's that the Kings have earned enough respect that no one takes them lightly now. They could feel it every night. "You're not catching anybody by surprise anymore," Fox said. "You want to go in every game knowing that you're gonna get teams' best. And I think that we were getting that this year. There were times where we responded, there were times that we didn't. There are games that we lost that we probably shouldn't have lost. ... We know that we can compete with all these teams." But Fox sees hope as he scans the top of the West standings, and a common trait: patience. It took the Thunder five years to make this leap after acquiring Gilgeous-Alexander in 2019. It took the Timberwolves four years after drafting Edwards (and nine years after drafting Karl-Anthony Towns). Heck, it took the Nuggets four years just to make the playoffs with Jokic—and another four after that to win the championship. The leap from good to great takes time. "Not just in basketball," said Brown, "but I think in life, there's a process you got to go through, as a young person or young team. You might be pretty good. But you're still going to hit some roadblocks because you have other people gunning for you." These aren't just sunny platitudes, but rather the collected wisdom of a coach who's lived nearly every scenario in his 27 years on NBA benches, learned the craft as an assistant to Gregg Popovich, won titles alongside Steve Kerr in Golden State, coached LeBron James to 60-win seasons (and got fired anyway), coached Kobe Bryant in his twilight (and got fired there, too). As Brown, now 54, knows well: Nothing comes easily, or quickly, in this league. The Kings will need time and probably some timely additions along the way. "Last year, we snuck up on some people, people didn't respect us," Brown said. "We're gonna have to figure some things out. We're not going to be world beaters and NBA champions , which you hope you are and you continue to fight for and you think you have a chance to at the end of the day. But it's gonna be hard to do that in two years or three." The Nuggets might provide a vague blueprint of sorts. It wasn't long ago that skeptics looked at their shaky defense and wondered whether a team built around a scoring and playmaking center who doesn't protect the paint could ever contend. Denver solved the problem by shoring up its defense everywhere else, acquiring physical, athletic wings like Aaron Gordon and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. Of course, Sabonis isn't a two-time MVP, but functionally the Kings face the same challenge today that the Nuggets did a few years ago. Could the Kings find their own Gordon and Caldwell-Pope and make a similar leap? Quietly, Sacramento officials acknowledge that Denver is a model they've studied and could try to replicate. Not everyone is convinced, however. "I just don't like the way they're built," said a rival scout of the Kings. "They're running everything through as if he was Jokic, but he's not Jokic. He's a hell of a player, but he can't shoot, so he can't really stretch the floor. It makes it a really static type of basketball." The scout also suggested that the Kings need a more traditional point guard next to Fox rather than a shooter, to allow him to thrive more off the ball. Internally, the Kings remain relentlessly optimistic. Their two stars just reached their primes, and they have one of the younger rotations among the West's top 10 teams, with Murray, Ellis (24), and Davion Mitchell (25) all still evolving. Murray is viewed as a potential star with a trajectory along the lines of Khris Middleton or better. (His year two stats compare favorably to Paul George's.) Monk (26) is a free agent, and his potential departure after a big season would be a huge blow. But the Kings feel good about their roster flexibility. They should be under the luxury tax for at least the next two years, allowing them access to all of their salary-cap exceptions. They control all of their future first-round picks (minus a protected one owed to Atlanta). They have the tools, and the time, to keep building around this core. Maybe the Kings will find a gem in the draft or get lucky in free agency. Maybe they'll swing a massive trade for an established star. Maybe Murray will become Middleton, or better. "We're in a spot where we will have opportunities to continue to grow this team," McNair said. "We have a combination of flexibility, assets, and really good players. And it's gonna be hard, obviously, in the West because it always is. But we feel like we're well positioned, and we'll have options on which pathway to pursue." What the Kings need most now is that rarest of NBA commodities: patience. And again, they can look to Denver for guidance. The Nuggets never panicked, even during the frustrating early years with Jokic and Jamal Murray. They didn't fire coach Michael Malone (now one of the NBA's longest tenured, at nine years). They didn't make a swing-for-the fences trade or give up on Murray. They played the long game and made opportunistic deals for less pricey, undervalued talents while giving their core players time to grow. Why can't the Kings do the same? And that glut of good-to-great teams won't last forever. The Lakers, Clippers, Suns, and Warriors are all on borrowed time, given the age of their franchise stars. There should be room for a Kings ascent as the older generation fades. Then again: The young Rockets are already rising, the Grizzlies will get Ja Morant back, and the Spurs now possess the single scariest new player in basketball, Victor Wembanyama. Maybe the glut will just get … gluttier? On the final weekend of the regular season, the Kings were gamely battling the Suns and reveling in their glorious past. Franchise legend Chris Webber was sitting courtside, next to former teammate Vlade Divac, and the pair got the loudest ovations of the night. At halftime, a small herd of folks in cow costumes (dispatched by a fast-food chain) roamed the concourse, giving away thousands of small purple cowbells emblazoned with the team logo, another nod to the glory years. There's no telling how the offseason will play out or what reinforcements may arrive this summer. But the Kings will most assuredly be back in the mix—passes flying, beams lit, and cowbells clanging deep into the spring.

Can the Sacramento Kings Escape the NBA’s Maddening Middle?

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