No NBA Team Had A Worse COVID-19 Hiatus Than The Kings, Who Seek Redemption

If there is some form of justice out there in the basketball universe, maybe the Sacramento Kings will pull ahead of Portland for the No. 9 seed in the Western Conference—they are now just .001 behind—stay within 4.0 games of the eighth-seeded Grizzlies, beat Memphis twice in play-in games and do the unthinkable: finish this downright miserable year with a playoff spot, the franchise’s first in 14 years.

Or, more likely, the Kings will travel to Orlando for the season restart, go 0-8, and head into a condensed offseason once again trying to come to grips with their own foibles and follies. Now is the time to rescue the franchise or let it sink deeper into irrelevance and moribundity. Here’s hoping for some redemption.

It is difficult to imagine a team having a worse time in since the season shut down because of concerns over the spread of the novel coronavirus than Sacramento (Utah, perhaps, with the injury to Bojan Bogdanovic and the Donovan Mitchell-Rudy Gobert tension, but at least the Jazz have a playoff spot). The Kings did, technically, have the first game canceled because of the virus, as players were warming up for what would have been a home game against the Pelicans, the last game of the league’s March 11 slate, when the call came to cancel the game.

Things have not gone so well since. Consider:

  • In April, a press conference was held with California Gov. Gavin Newsome and Kings owner Vivek Ranadive, at which the two announced that the Kings’ arena, the Golden 1 Center, as well as the adjacent practice facility would be donated for use as hospital space for coronavirus patients as needed. There was much back-patting, at least until the Sacramento Bee reported that the Kings had actually only donated the practice facility. The arena was being lent to the state at a cost of $500,000 per month over three months. The Kings took two of those payments before the franchise stopped charging the state, an embarrassing PR flub.
  • In late May, play-by-play broadcaster Grant Napear, who had been with the franchise since 1988, received a tweet from former Kings center DeMarcus Cousins—the two had a contentious relationship during Cousins’ tenure. Cousins wrote to Napear, “What’s your take on BLM (Black Lives Matter)?” When Napear responded, “ALL LIVES MATTER…EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!” it set off an online firestorm that saw Napear attacked by former Kings forward Matt Barnes, who called him a, “closet racist” and franchise icon Chris Webber, who wrote on Twitter, “We know and have known who (Grant) is. The team knows as well. I’ve told them many times.” Napear was fired from his job hosting a call-in sports show on KHTK and resigned from his duties with the Kings.
  • Now, in June, just as the league has set the ground rules for its restart, at least three members of the team have tested positive for COVID-19—Buddy Hield, Alex Len and Jabari Parker. The three will have time to recover and rejoin the Kings, but it is not the kind of start to the NBA’s reset the forebodes good things for the Kings. For a little insult to all this injury, when The Ringer ran a poll asking fans which team would get the No. 8 seed, the Kings were not included. When ESPN ran a poll of its writers picking who would win the eighth seed, the Kings got zero votes, prompting De’Aaron Fox to tweet, “Damn we have an absolute 0% chance.”

It has been that kind of year in Sacramento, or, maybe, that kind of decade-and-a-half. The team entered the season with high hopes of breaking the playoff drought—the longest current drought in the NBA—but an 0-5 start cast a pall pretty quickly. There were fits of improvement but health weighed the team down. There were significant injuries to young stars De’Aaron Fox and Marvin Bagley, as well as starting center Richaun Holmes, and an inexplicable slump from Hield, who had just gotten a $90 million contract extension in the offseason.

In that light, getting to 28-36 as the season gets back into action is a minor miracle. The Kings won 13 of their last 20 games to be in that position. That is cause for some optimism. The team got better when Bogdan Bogdanovic moved into the starting five and Hield moved to the bench. Center Harry Giles improved and took over a starting role. It remains possible that Bagley will return from the foot injury that has kept him out since January.

Still, there is much that would need to go right for the Kings to slip into the postseason. The way things have gone for the franchise since the league imposed this coronavirus hiatus, there’s not much to indicate that good things are in the offing.

Speak Your Mind

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Get in Touch

350FansLike
100FollowersFollow
281FollowersFollow
150FollowersFollow

Recommend for You

Oh hi there 👋
It’s nice to meet you.

Subscribe and receive our weekly newsletter packed with awesome articles that really matters to you!

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

You might also like

Global Shares Advance On Stimulus, Biden Victory Hopes

TOKYO: Asian shares inched towards 2-1/2-year highs on Friday as revived hopes for a...

155 Indian companies generated over $22 billion in investments,...

New Delhi: A total of 155 companies with origins in India are responsible for...

HHS Secretary Azar says the FDA will move ‘as...

Alex Azar, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), speaks during a news conference...