Sacramento Kings fans should keep expectations low for upcoming strange season

Expectations can be a tricky thing.

If you think your team will make the playoffs and they win 30 games, it’s a huge disappointment. If you think your team will have the league’s worst record and they win 30 games, it’s a fun surprise. And even though Kings fans should be accustomed to lowering their expectations, that’s not our inherent nature as sports fans.

This isn’t a question of whether or not Kings fans should be rooting for the team to tank, or hoping to make the playoffs and finally end the NBA’s longest active playoff drought. It’s a question of what’s a realistic hope for this season, which the Kings tip off Wednesday night at the Denver Nuggets.

I’m here to implore you to lower your expectations for this season.

It would be great if the Kings could sneak into the playoffs this year. Even if the Kings made the play-in tournament as the 10th or 9th seed, that would mean a higher stakes game than Kings fans have watched in 14 years. But when we look at the Western Conference, the odds are against the Kings even being the 10th-best team in the West.

The Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Clippers, and Denver Nuggets should all remain near the top of the Western standings. The Utah Jazz didn’t lose any notable players. The Dallas Mavericks will be led by wunderkind Luka Doncic. The Trail Blazers added depth around an already strong core. The Phoenix Suns, after a frisky showing in the Orlando bubble, added Chris Paul. The Golden State Warriors have Steph Curry back and added help in James Wiseman and Kelly Oubre. That’s already eight teams and we haven’t gotten to the Memphis Grizzlies, the San Antonio Spurs or the New Orleans Pelicans. The Spurs are on a downward trend, but still have a roster full of proven veterans. And then there’s the Houston Rockets, who will remain playoff bound unless James Harden is actually traded.

The only team the Kings are almost surely better than are the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are bottoming out as they begin their rebuild. The Kings might be better than the Minnesota Timberwolves, too, but it depends who has better young players.

None of this is meant to be a downer, it’s just a hard look at the reality the Kings face this season. And the hits will come hard and fast. The Kings, like every team, will have less practice time this season and more back-to-backs. That means less time for the coaching staff to work with young players, less time to make adjustments and less time for coach Luke Walton to watch the tape.

The Kings added young pieces this summer, but allowed one of the team’s best players in Bogdan Bogdanovic to leave for nothing in return, as well as Kent Bazemore, Alex Len and Harry Giles III. The West will be tougher and the Kings have less talent to face it with.

That doesn’t mean Kings fans should give up all hope. Any team can make an unexpected leap. De’Aaron Fox could take another step forward, Marvin Bagley III could stay healthy and remind everyone why he was a consensus top-five pick, Buddy Hield could return to form and the Kings could catch everyone by surprise. We’ve seen it happen before. It just doesn’t appear likely.

The benefit of lowered expectations is that it’s easier to have them met or exceeded. Don’t expect too much from these Kings and you might not be let down. I’ll be rooting for the young guys to grow and develop, while recognizing that this will be one of the weirdest seasons in NBA history and that it’s not the end of the world if they miss the playoffs for one more season as long as they are building in the right direction.

Greg Wissinger is the managing editor of KingsHerald.com and has been covering the Kings since 2009.

This story was originally published December 22, 2020 at 7:18 AM.