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I’ve made it no secret that I’m a casual Sacramento Kings fan. One reason is that I like their fans, because they understand the small-market “nobody cares about us” complex. The Kangz are even easier to like now that DeMarcus Cousins is gone, and such characters as Buddy Hield, Skal Labissiere and Willey Cauley-Stein (who did not posterize Rudy Gobert, if anyone was wondering) are the main guys to follow at the moment. In my opinion, being a non-die-hard Kings supporter, the team is more fun to watch now than they were with Boogie. However, they’re still a train wreck this season, (but not a Sleep Train wreck) they were a train wreck last season, and they were a train wreck the season before that. So, when was the last time the Kings were, you know, good?
Since 2005-2006 season, which was the last season in which they made the playoffs, the Kings are 262-572. (.314) Ouch. In the era before this one, though, the Kings were quite an impressive basketball team, sporting a record of 351-191 (.647) from the ‘98-‘99 season to the ‘04-’05 season. Their run included two playoff series wins over our very own Utah Jazz, (‘01-‘02 and ‘01-‘03) four 50+ win seasons and one 60+ win season. Guys like Jason Williams, Chris Webber, Vlade Divac, Peja Stojakovic and Mike Bibby (near the tail-end) made the Kangz fun to watch. Tyrone Corbin was in there somewhere too. No, seriously, they were fun to watch. Check it out:
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I won’t bore you with the details, but moves were made, a lot of them were bad, draft picks didn’t pan out, the Kings had a crazy coaching carousel and an ownership change, and they are a bad basketball team.
Turns out Vlade Divac was a better player than he is an executive.
My heart goes out to you, Kings fans! You deserve better than this, and I hope the post-Boogie era is kind to you.
Also, I hope your loss total goes from 572 to 573 tonight, because the Jazz are desperately trying to cling to the 4th seed right now.