The Abridged version:
- After a hopeful stretch in 2023, the Sacramento Kings fell short of expectations last year, casting doubt on prospects for success in the upcoming season.
- Key questions include the defense-first approach of Coach Doug Christie and the performances of aging All-Star DeMar DeRozan and shooting guard Zach LaVine.
- Kings fans have seen this movie before and are trying to remain positive despite a history of frustration.
Heading into the 2025-26 NBA season, the Sacramento Kings find themselves in a familiar place – at a crossroads.
National media doubt that the team can return to the playoffs after a disastrous 2024-25 season: All-Star point guard De’Aaron Fox forced a trade following the firing of coach Mike Brown, ending the franchise’s longest period of stability since Chris Webber left town 20 years ago. With the good vibes of the Beam Team’s run to the playoffs in 2023 now firmly in the rearview, the franchise faces a litany of questions as it attempts to set a new course.
After losing to Toronto 130-122 at Golden 1 Center in their first preseason game Wednesday night, the Kings play again Friday night in Portland. The regular season opener will be on the road in Phoenix on Oct. 22, with the home opener two days later against Utah.
How much more heartache can fans take?
Rewind the tape to April 2023: The Kings had finally broken their 16-season playoff drought, the longest in American pro sports. The combination of Fox and new center Domantas Sabonis was clicking. It was the first season of lighting the beam for wins. The future looked bright.
In the playoffs, the Kings won the first two games at a rocking Golden 1 Center against the vaunted Golden State Warriors. The series went the distance. In Game 7, superstar Steph Curry dropped a playoff career-high 50 points, the Kings lost 120-100 and the dream was interrupted.
Even with the devastating defeat, many fans hoped the Kings were just getting started.
Lifelong Kings fan Steven Sharp was at the team’s watch party that day outside Golden 1. “We thought we had a bright future, and … just chaos after that,” he said before Wednesday night’s game. “It’s par for the course in Sacramento, but I’m hoping they can pick up the pieces.”
Jim Walter, who became a Kings fan when he moved to Sacramento in the early 1990s and was inside the arena for that Warriors game, added: “It sucked. … You’re expecting this is going to get bigger and bigger.”
But just four players from that team remain, and Kings fans fear they have returned to the NBA’s dreaded treadmill of mediocrity – not quite good enough to make deep playoff runs but not bad enough to get high lottery draft picks who can turn things around.
So now, that Game 7 two years ago looks more like the end than the beginning of something great.
Asked to describe the life of a Kings fan, Walter shrugged: “Frustration. You don’t expect much.”
Are the playoffs a pipe dream?
Most oddsmakers and analysts have set the team’s win total in the mid-30s – the highest places them at 43.5 – out of 82 regular season games. Last season, when the Kings finished ninth in the Western Conference and lost in the play-in tournament, they went 40-42. With many of the six teams that finished behind them in the West making improvements, the Kings face a daunting task.
In April 2024, Brown, the Kings’ eighth coach since 2012, was joined on the unemployment line by Monte McNair, the team’s general manager since 2020. McNair was replaced by Scott Perry, who briefly ran the team’s front office in 2017 before being hired away by the New York Knicks, who picked Brown as their new coach for this season.
Perry has spent the past six months trying to make sense of an island of misfit toys, as Fox’s departure left a roster lacking the balance that it had for most of the past few seasons.
Who will stay and who could go?
Zach LaVine and DeMar DeRozan represent the biggest question marks – and possible trade assets. LaVine, a two-time All-Star shooting guard long coveted by Kings owner Vivek Ranadivé, was the main return in the Fox trade to San Antonio. LaVine has been criticized for his defense and shot selection but remains one of the league’s best athletes and outside shooters.
DeRozan, LaVine’s teammate for three seasons in Chicago and a six-time All-Star, is another matter. Entering his 17th season, DeRozan, 36, is still remarkably effective. Analysts note that he shoots a high percentage from the field and rarely misses games. He is a leader in the locker room. But he doesn’t shoot threes, and he can’t defend near the level the Kings need to keep him in the starting lineup.
Signed amid great vibes last summer – just the idea of a good player being excited to sign with the team was novel – DeRozan watched as things disintegrated around him in vintage Kings fashion. At Media Day on Sept. 29, he described his first season: “Last year just was, internally, a s—show.”
This brings us to the starters most people assume are still firmly part of the team’s long-term plans: Sabonis and forward Keegan Murray. Sabonis has already established himself as one of the best players in franchise history, with two All-NBA selections and averages of 19 points, 13 rebounds and seven assists a game since he came to town in 2022. Sabonis has three years and $140 million remaining on his contract.
Murray, 25, and entering his fourth season, is up for his rookie scale extension, which is expected to be wrapped up before the Oct. 20 deadline and should be in the neighborhood of $120 million over four years. A jack of all trades, Murray, some worry, is at risk of turning out to be a master of none. While that wouldn’t be a disaster considering his size, shooting touch and versatility, it would be somewhat of a disappointment given his pedigree as the fourth pick in the 2022 draft. This season may be his last shot to unlock his full potential.
Ellis and Clifford likely to survive the year
The other two players most likely to be on the roster at this time next year are Keon Ellis and Nique Clifford. Ellis, an undrafted 3&D (three pointers and defense) guard who ground his way out of the G League and into the team’s rotation, is seen as a player who can fit on any team. Clifford, GM Perry’s inaugural first round draft pick, is a versatile wing out of Colorado State who has drawn comparisons to his head coach, Doug Christie.
Perry doesn’t seem to be particularly attached to last season’s first round pick, Devin Carter, who had a nightmare rookie season and, along with Malik Monk – once the poster child for The Great Vibes – was reportedly offered along with a future first rounder to Golden State for disgruntled 23-year-old forward Jonathan Kuminga.
With Fox gone, the team came into the offseason with a glaring hole at point guard, which Perry filled by signing veteran Dennis Schröder to a three-year, $45 million deal. Schröder, a fringe starter throughout his career, is coming off a banner spring and summer where he played a key role in Detroit’s near upset of the Knicks in the playoffs and led Germany to a EuroBasket title. He will be tasked with connecting all of the roster’s disparate threads and keeping everybody happy with their role in the offense. And playing aggressive defense. And providing leadership.
The idea that this will all come together – that the roster will coalesce and leapfrog more talented teams with more established offensive and defensive schemes – seems like a long shot. Even if the Kings exceed their projected win total by 10 or so games, they’ll still probably need to battle out of the play-in tournament to reach the playoffs.
Will head coach Christie make it through the season?
Christie, the Kings’ starting shooting guard from 2000 to 2005 and an assistant coach since 2021, took over after Brown was fired last December and was hired permanently by Perry in May. Christie first came to work for the team the year after his former teammate Vlade Divac, the team’s third of five GMs under Ranadivé, stepped down.
“The Kings obviously have got this addiction to their beloved former players,” says Sam Amick, a national NBA writer for The Athletic and former Kings beat reporter. “Neither one of them were getting that job anywhere else but Sacramento. And that’s not a personal attack, it’s just the truth.”
Christie fared fairly well in his interim stint last season, closing the year 27-24 after Brown was fired with the team at 13-18. The players respect him and seem genuinely bought in to giving his defensive scheme and more egalitarian offense a shot.
While an optimistic Christie said the Kings will be the best conditioned team in the league, defense is still a big concern. “If we defend, we get out and we run,” he said at Media Day. “We want to defend, we want to defend, we want to defend.”
Ownership, presumably wary of further diminishing their reputation among the league’s coaches and running out of viable former players, will probably keep Christie through this season unless something catastrophic happens. Next year is anybody’s guess.
What is new GM Perry’s vision for the team?
Perry, a Detroit native, has strong relationships across the league.
At his introductory press conference, Perry spoke to the kind of players he’s looking for as he tries to build a long-term winner: “We’re going to require toughness. We want a defensive orientation. We’ve got to play extremely hard, and we’ve got to play together.”
Which is to say he’s trying to build the team in the image of the Pistons teams he helped build in the early 2000s, as well as that of the Knicks, where he served as GM from 2017-2023.
Can Ranadivé get out of his own way?
It’s been a rough year for the Kings owner’s reputation in Sacramento, especially given his role in bringing the A’s to town, which seems to have insulted baseball fans as much as it has entertained them.
The Fox trade and the firings of yet another coach and GM brought back fans’ nightmares of what former forward Rudy Gay once called “basketball hell.”
“I think the key for Vivek – and the thing that always seems to trip him up a little bit – is that when the team isn’t playing up to his expectations or hopes, he has this bad habit of always having kind of an advisor next to him, either formally or informally, who becomes like the de facto second guesser,” Amick said.
Perry will need to be nearly perfect to thread the needle and create a contender in the next few years. LaVine and DeRozan are the team’s most obvious candidates to be traded, but their value is limited. Perry will need to hit home runs in free agency and the draft – starting with first rounder Clifford having a strong rookie season.
If things go completely sideways this year, it may not be the worst thing, so long as it results in a top draft pick – someone like projected No. 1 overall pick Darryn Peterson, who has been compared to “a 6-feet-6-inches Damian Lillard” and who could pair with Sabonis to create a true contender sooner than later.
But all of this will be far more challenging if Ranadivé fires either Christie or Perry this season. If he does, the franchise will be seen as back to square one – again.
“I feel better than a lot of people, if I’m being honest,” said Kings fan Sharp. “A lot of people are really down. But I think they’re at least gonna be better than people say.”
Walter, who attended Wednesday night’s game, is less optimistic. “They have some talent, but I don’t know how this talent works together. … I don’t think the team we’re seeing now is gonna be the team that finishes the year. Is that a good or a bad thing? I don’t know.”
Robert Ohman is a Sacramento freelance writer.