The Kings are Dead. Just Like My Heart.
How One Man Lost the Will to Follow His Team
Growing up in northwest Florida with two parents who could not have cared less about professional sports forced me to pick and choose my own teams to follow. Which, if I’m being honest, can be pretty great. Sometimes.
When I was a wee lad in the late 80s and early 90s I fell in love with the Green Bay Packers. Green was one of my favorite colors, and when the Atlanta Falcons traded Brett Favre to Green Bay, well…that was a fun time to be a Packers fan.
In college in the early 2000s I fell all-the-way in love with baseball. I had hated the New York Yankees my entire life, and that completely irrational hatred led me to choose the Boston Red Sox as the team to attach my hopes to.
Around 2008 or 2009 I decided to choose a National Hockey League team because, why not? After days of research, I decided upon the Toronto Maple Leafs who are insanely popular, but at the time were a complete DISASTER of a team. The Leafs help balance out my good teams.
The one team not mentioned above is the one I’m here to talk about today. You may have heard that over the weekend, during the National Basketball Association’s annual All-Star Weekend festivities, the Sacramento Kings traded All-Star Center, DeMarcus Cousins to the New Orleans Pelicans for essentially magic beans and a dumpster that also happens to be on fire.
I first started following the Kings back in 1999 when I was a sixteen year old sophomore. The Kings had just drafted Jason Williams from the University of Florida and his flashy play, the signings of Vlade Divac, Chris Webber and Peja Stojakovic in previous seasons, and my long-time hatred of the Lakers led me to fall completely in love with this unorthodox team of flashy jerks and giant European dudes.
The first few years of Kings fandom were pretty good! The team was fun to watch, and had some great players. Those good times did not last though, and now, presented solely so that you may mock my misfortune, I’m going to present a timeline of every dumb-ass, moronic, and baffling thing that has happened to the Sacramento Kings in the past 15 or so years. Come along with me on this horrifying trip as I try to remain sober and coherent and not cry all over my keyboard at this team run by feckless idiots and stupid babies.
- In 2001 we traded Jason Williams (and Nick Anderson) to the Memphis Grizzlies for Mike Bibby (and Brent Price). Now, this was actually a good move! But! I love Jason Williams and it made me really sad, so it gets included in here. This is the first, last and only good thing the Kings did that you will see me post. Buckle the heck up.
- I can’t even talk to you about 2002.
- In 2003 Chris Webber blew out his knee against the Dallas Mavericks in the 2nd round of the playoffs. I blame the Kings for this.
- 2004–2006 was the last gasp of any kind of competitive spirit for the Kings. During this period we got old and weak and traded away some of the beloved veterans to try and get some fresh blood in the mix. None of these moves really worked.
- In 2006 our coach, Eric Musselman was arrested for a DUI. Recently traded-for Ron Artest abused his dogs and was accused of domestic assault. The Kings fired Musselman at the end of the season. Also, in the 2006 Draft we picked Quincy Douby with the 19th pick instead of Rajon Rondo, Paul Millsap or Kyle Lowry. Pay attention to my draft notes. You’re going to see a lot of them.
- 2007 saw the departure of Mike Bibby, the last remaining Kings player who had seen anything close to success. We were bad in 2007. Also, we drafted Spencer Hawes with the 10th pick. Hawes has a garbage Twitter account and has played for six teams over the past ten seasons.
- We were bad in 2008; we finished the 2008–2009 season at 17–65. Hahaha, that’s so bad. That’s really bad, y’all. We also drafted Jason Thompson with the 12th pick, ahead of guys like Roy Hibbert, Serge Ibaka, Courtney Lee, and literally like 15 other dudes who are better players.
- Ah, 2009. What a year. We drafted Tyreke Evans! He won the Rookie of the Year! Yes, we drafted him ahead of Steph Curry, but so what? Hahahah, this team. We also had a 25% chance of winning the #1 draft pick. We did not win the #1 pick. In our 10 straight years in the lottery (top-10 draft picks) we have been #1 ZERO times. Cleveland did it three times. CLEVELAND. Minnesota too! And Minnesota is ASS. We finished 25–57, 29 games out of the playoffs. Jesus Christ.
- In 2010 we drafted handsome demi-God DeMarcus Cousins. Even with Cousins and Evans, we finished 24–58. Verily, the Lord has cursed this franchise unto eternity. At the end of the season our owners, the Maloof brothers (Please understand that I could write a book solely based on the incompetent scheming of the Aloofs) decided they wanted to maybe go ahead and move the franchise to Anaheim. We almost lost the team! I was heart-broken after the final game, even though we were trash. This was our team, you know? Thankfully(???) the NBA Board of Governors voted down the relocation bid during the beginning of the 2011 season. I was happy! For one brief shining moment in time anyway.
- The 2011 draft. Jesus Christ. So. We traded the 7th pick and Beno Udrih (a productive player!) for John Salmons who had previously played for us for three seasons and the 10th pick. With that 10th pick, we selected…wait for it…wait for it….JIMMER BY GOD MORMON BOY FREDETTE. We could have had Klay Thompson. We could have had Kawhi Leonard. I’d end a stranger’s life to get Kawhi on the Kings. Jimmer plays in China now. The draft was salvaged by us picking Isaiah Thomas with the 60th pick, and I.T. was a phenomenal player for us….until we decided that being 5'9" was a detriment for a starting point guard and we let him go in 2014 for literal peanuts. He’s a two-time All-Star point guard for the Celtics now. Fuck this team forever. We also went 22–44 (seasoned shortened due to lockout).
- The 2012 was (surprise!) another disaster. We drafted Thomas Robinson with the 5th pick…anddddd traded him half-way through his rookie season. Could have had Damian Lilliard. Could have had Andre Drummond. Could have had Harrison Barnes. Could have just drafted a box of fruit roll-ups and some Teddy Grahms for all the good they would do. Finished 28–54 this season too. I don’t have a drinking problem because of the Kings, but they certainly helped it along.
- 2013. Ah, 2013. This is where the wheels start just completely coming off. Finally, after years of mismanagement and penny-pinching and terrible coaching hires and general awful behavior, the Maloofs decided to sell the franchise. After months and months of worry that we would be re-located to Seattle (who had previously lost the Supersonics to Oklahoma City), an ownership group led by tech billionaire Vivek Ranadive stepped in to buy the team (for $534 million!) and keep the team in Sacramento. This was the happiest I’d been as a Kings fan since the beginning of the previous decade. Guess how long that happiness lasted? Anyway, we drafted Ben McLemore instead of the Greek Freak Giannis Antetokounmpo. Ben still plays for us! He’s ok. Not great! Just ok. We finished 28–54 this season too. Good times.
- In the 2014 draft we picked Nic Stauskas. He’s going to play a very important part in just a little bit, so let’s not talk about him right this second. He’s shit though. We fired our new(ish) coach, Michael Malone a third of the way into the season because…we were losing less than we expected? Actually it’s because Vivek wanted us to play a ‘faster pace’ of ball, even though our team wasn’t suited for that style. Hahahah, that’s not the last time Vivek will get involved with the team. That asshole. This team makes me sad in my heart.
- In 2015 we hired eventual Hall of Fame coach George Karl. He immediately clashed with Cousins and was generally a real dick. We fired him at the end of the 2015–2016 season. We did finish 33–49 though! Our most wins since….2007–2008! HOWEVAH. Remember Nic Stauskas from earlier? In 2015 we traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers to clear cap-space and get some bad contracts off our roster. Oh and we also shipped a first-round draft pick and two pick swaps (meaning if we finish with a better lottery pick, the 76ers can just take ours. This. Fucking. Team.) GUHHHHHHHHH. This would be the worst trade the Kings ever made except we’ve got that whole Cousins thing to talk about it. I can’t believe I ever liked this team.
- Ah, 2016. Here we are. We opened a new arena! We’ve got another new coach! (Hi, Dave Joerger!) We drafted a whole bunch of nobodies! We could possibly make the 8th seed in the Western Conference! We’re sitting at 24–33, which is bad, but not bad enough I guess, because…WE TRADED DEMARCUS COUSINS, OUR 3-TIME ALL-STAR CENTER TO THE NEW ORLEANS PELICANS FOR A BAG OF SHIT THAT WAS ALSO ON FIRE. Tom Ziller of SBNation explains this better than I can but the gist is that we have spent the last six and a half years building our team around Boogie. We’ve signed players and hired coaches specifically to make him the focal point of our team. The front office even told him as recently as January that we were committed to keeping him long-term with everyone assuming we would offer a max, $200 million contract, and he would accept. We assumed that because THAT’S WHAT THE KINGS/COUSINS SAID THEY WOULD DO. WELP. And now, not only have we traded him, but we did not get anything close to the return one should get on a top-15 NBA player. And I know, Cousins has long had his behavioral issues — tough to coach, technical fouls, bad attitudes, whatever. He is still one of the most dominating big men in the league and any NBA executive who says they wouldn’t want him on their team are lying in order to get you to sell low.
Anyway we leveraged our past to leverage our present? And we leveraged our future too? I don’t know. We’re bad and we deserve to be. Agents know you can’t trust us now. Our owner is a moron who wants his hands in everything. Our GM is a nice guy (former player Vlade Divac!) who has literally no idea what he’s doing. Our team is full of nobodies (and injured-ass Rudy Gay!) We’ve got draft picks, but they could end up being terrible depending on how good/bad the 76ers and the Pelicans are. We may end up getting rid of two All-Star players and receiving ZERO back when it’s all said and done. Amazing.
It’s one thing to be bad.
It’s another thing to be dumb.
It’s something else entirely to be dumb and bad for 15 years.
It’s another thing to be dumb and bad for 15 years with no clear end to the bad dumbness in sight.
The best part? This list is just the things I can remember. I haven’t gotten deep into how the Maloofs tried to become Vodka barons and lost their money and we had to take cash considerations in trade to keep the team afloat. Or how we used then Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson to help block the relocation bid by the Maloofs. Johnson is a GARBAGE PERSON. I haven’t talked about how Vivek wanted us to experiment with playing 4 on 5 basketball (A. TERRIBLE. IDEA). Or how Vivek thinks Buddy Hield (the main player we got back in the Cousins deal is the next Steph Curry. Hield is a rookie averaging 8 points a game. Meanwhile, Cousins is averaging career bests in points and assists per game and three-point shooting percentage (27.8, 4.8, and .356 respectively.)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There is so much more Kings dumbassery that I could give to you, but I won’t because, a. I love you, b. my heart can’t take it, and c. guhhhhhhhhhhhh. The only thing that matters is that ESPN ranked us 115th out of 122 sports franchises in a poll voted on by the public in October of last year. After the Cousins trade, I’m going to assume we drop to the bottom.
Nothing means anything and everything is darkness.
So here’s where I’m at. The way I see it, I’ve got three basic options:
- Stay the course. Continue following this team even though they make me pray for a swift death. Hahahah, I don’t know.
- Find some other team to follow. A team less dysfunctional than my own. Like the Knicks. Or the Washington Generals.
- Say to hell with teams and just follow awesome players. I love Boogie. I love Kristaps and Kawhi and Russ and Durant and Giannis. Maybe this will soften the pain in my heart? Maybe I’ll die angry? Who knows.
What do you think folks? Sound off in the comments and let me know which way I should go, because I’m at the end of my rope here. Help me. Save me from myself. Save me from the Kings.
