Midseason: Are Kings out of NBA playoff race? Should they buy or sell at trade deadline?
The Kings took a 30-minute bus ride from the team hotel to Denver International Airport on Saturday after ending the first half of the NBA season with a 121-111 loss to the Denver Nuggets on Friday night at Ball Arena.
The itinerary indicated the Kings were traveling to the Pacific Northwest to play the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday, but they’re really just wandering through no-man’s-land with a 16-25 record and no real sense of direction.
The Kings set out to end their record-tying 15-year playoff drought this season, but they are falling well short of expectations at midseason. FiveThirtyEight.com projects they will finish 13th in the Western Conference with a 31-51 record. The website gives Sacramento a paltry 3% chance of reaching the playoffs.
“Obviously, we’re disappointed,” interim Kings coach Alvin Gentry said. “I think we’re a better team than our record, but, once again, you’ve got to prove that on the court.”
As currently constructed, the Kings are neither good enough to reach the postseason nor bad enough to secure a top pick in the NBA draft. Former Kings president of basketball operations Geoff Petrie changed this franchise’s fortunes when he traded Mitch Richmond for Chris Webber in 1998 and again when he traded Peja Stojakovic for Ron Artest in 2006. General manager Monte McNair might have to pull off a blockbuster trade of his own to rescue the organization from the wastelands of mediocrity.
The Feb. 10 NBA trade deadline is still a month away, but Sacramento’s fate could be sealed by then. The Kings are only a half-game behind the San Antonio Spurs for the final play-in spot in the Western Conference, but they are just a half-game ahead of the Blazers, one game ahead of the New Orleans Pelicans and 1½ games ahead of the Oklahoma City Thunder.
“We still have an opportunity to accomplish what we set out to accomplish,” Gentry said. “We are at the halfway point. I think the thing that’s the most interesting this year is that, other than Phoenix, Golden State and Utah, everyone else is kind of in that pack. So, if you’re able to put together a little winning streak here and there, I think you can get yourself right back in the middle of everything that’s going on.
“We are disappointed as to where we are right now, but the great thing about that is we still hold our own destiny. We don’t have to look at the standings and say, ‘Oh, boy, I hope they lost tonight’ or anything like that. What we have to do is take care of our business.”
Playoff picture
Here’s how FiveThirtyEight projected the Western Conference playoff race going into Saturday’s games:
1. Jazz (58-24)
2. Suns (58-24)
3. Warriors (55-27)
4. Grizzlies (50-32)
5. Mavericks (47-35)
6. Nuggets (46-36)
These teams are projected to reach the play-in tournament:
7. Timberwolves (41-41)
8. Clippers (39-43)
9. Lakers (39-43)
10. Trail Blazers (36-46)
Based on these projections, Sacramento would have to go at least 20-21 over the last 41 games to get into the play-in group. The Kings have already won the season series against the Blazers, so they hold what could be an important tiebreaker, but there is little reason to believe this team will suddenly start playing .500 basketball without making a significant change. The Kings haven’t gone .500 over the first or second half of any season since 2005-06, when they went 27-14 in the final 41 games to reach the playoffs after trading Stojakovic for Artest.
Draft odds
The first three picks in the NBA draft are determined using a weighted lottery drawing among the 14 teams that miss the playoffs. The remaining picks are determined by reverse order of regular-season record.
The three worst teams will have a 14% chance of getting the No. 1 pick. Chances are lower for the fourth-worst team (12.5%), fifth-worst team (10.5%), sixth-worst team (9%) and so on.
Here’s how FiveThirtyEight projects the bottom of the NBA standings:
27. Thunder (23-59)
28. Rockets (22-60)
29. Magic (19-63)
30. Pistons (18-64)
The Kings would have to go 7-34 over the last 41 games to get into that group. That, too, seems highly unlikely as the Kings are currently constructed. Tankathon.com currently projects the Kings will finish with the eighth-worst record in the NBA, which would give them just a 6% chance of being awarded the No. 1 pick and a 26.3% chance of landing in the top four.
Trade deadline
There is little desire in Sacramento for fringe moves and marginal improvements. Most have made up their minds and split into two camps: Build this team up or tear it down.
Will the Kings be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline? That’s a decision this franchise has to make. Committing to a rebuild would be difficult with McNair in the second year of a four-year contract and owner Vivek Ranadive growing as impatient as his team’s fan base.
Pressure has been building within the organization since last summer, as we first reported in August. At the time, sources told The Sacramento Bee the Kings had shown interest in Ben Simmons and Pascal Siakam, an indication of the level of talent McNair hopes to acquire.
McNair wants to make a big move to bring winning basketball back to Sacramento. The Kings have been shopping Buddy Hield and Marvin Bagley III since the start of last season, but McNair might have to consider moving core pieces such as De’Aaron Fox, Tyrese Haliburton, Harrison Barnes or Richaun Holmes to get the kind of player he wants.
This story was originally published January 9, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
