The Sacramento Kings Have Clinched Their First Winning Season In 17 Years
They are playing much better than I expected down the stretch
I think that watching this new-look Sacramento Kings team play for most of the season, many long-suffering Kings fans were just waiting for the other shoe to drop at this point. This team has given fans new hope at this point. Coach Mike Brown has turned this team around in one season and looks poised to get them to the postseason for the first time in 17 seasons.
This is also their first winning season since the 2005–2006 NBA season. This team still has a shot of winning 50 games with 13 games left in the regular season. The team would have to go 8–5 in the last 13 games to achieve this and with their remaining schedule, it seems very likely. They are currently the second-seeded team in the Western Conference and are currently 4.5 games behind the Denver Nuggets, who have recently gone on a surprising four-game losing streak.
It seems like there is a small possibility that the Kings could even overtake the Nuggets with 13 games left but even if they don’t, this is still a major turnaround story for one of the NBA’s longest-suffering franchises. In one season, the Kings have gone from the joke of the NBA to the NBA’s top-rated offense and one of its best teams. It looks like the Kings have found their identity this year and are playing like a team ready to prove something. Mike Brown has given this team a different attitude about winning and has turned this team’s identity around.
De’Aaron Fox, who was a star before Brown came in, looks like a legitimate superstar with game-changing and clutch capabilities on both ends of the floor. Domantas Sabonis, one of the players acquired in last season’s late-season trade is only second in triple-doubles behind Nikola Jokic. Both were All-Star selections this year.
Their remaining 13 games look relatively easier than the final games for Denver and many of the other top teams in the Western Conference.
Kings @ Wizards, Kings @ Jazz, Suns @ Kings, Jazz @ Kings, Timberwolves @ Kings, Kings @ Trail Blazers, Kings @ Trail Blazers, Spurs @ Kings, Kings @ Pelicans, Kings @ Mavericks, Warriors @ Kings, and the final game: Kings @ Nuggets.
As you can see from the schedule, the Kings get the Nuggets in Denver for the final game of the year, if the teams are neck-and-neck at that point, the Kings could win the head-to-head and the tiebreaker and overtake the Nuggets for the first seed. The Grizzlies without Ja Morant certainly aren’t going to contend for that spot. Neither are the Suns without Durant who’ve fallen even further back at this point.
The Wizards are currently in the 10th spot in the East, the Jazz are 11th in the West and the Kings get them twice in three games, the Suns will be without Durant in their matchup, the Timberwolves are 7th in the West, the Trail Blazers are 13th in the West and the Kings get them twice in a row, the Spurs are 14th in the West, the Pelicans are 12th in the West, the Mavericks are 8th in the West and have been without Luka, the Warriors are 6th in the West but aren’t the same defending championship team that most teams would be scared of playing, and the Nuggets as of late has been a mess so it’ll be fun to see how this plays out. All of these games are very winnable for the Kings.
I don’t imagine that they’ll win all of them but they certainly are putting themselves in a good position this late in the season. The team is healthy and they are poised to make a run at the postseason. The playoffs are pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point. The only thing they need to do now is to prove that they can make a run.
So they cleared the first hurdle this year, getting enough wins to officially be a winning team. Again, for the rest of the season, all this other stuff will be an added and welcome bonus for us Kings fans. “Light the beam, Sacramento!!” I’m not seeing a championship-caliber team yet but they could get there before the playoffs roll around and I know that many teams in the Western Conference won’t feel great getting the Kings in a playoff series, especially since they will hold the home-court advantage for much of it.
