SACRAMENTO — About a year ago Monday, the energy in the Golden 1 Center media room during the Kings’ exit interviews was high, positive and hopeful.
Their magical 2022-23 NBA season ended in heartbreaking fashion, but they ended a 16-season playoff drought while reinstilling a sense of promise for the future in the basketball-loving city of Sacramento. ball.
But after finishing the 2023-24 season two wins short of last season’s record while dropping six spots in the standings, the mood was much different from the players Monday morning at Golden 1.
And it was summed up perfectly by one word repeated on the podium: Disappointment.
“The way it ended is really, really disappointing,” Kings star center Domantas Sabonis said during his exit interview. “It’s frustrating. It’s hard to even watch the playoffs, knowing we could contend there.
“So the fact that we’re not in the playoffs is definitely hard to swallow right now.”
The other 11 players who spoke to reporters Monday echoed that sentiment.
Sure, the Kings are going in the right direction, and compared to where this franchise has been for nearly two decades, a 46-win season isn’t great.
But that wasn’t and isn’t the mindset of this team that wants more.
“I think everyone is still trying to deal with the abruptness of the end of the season,” Harrison Barnes said. “But I think when you look at all the goals we had going into the season, I think the goal was to make the playoffs. So to miss that is a bit of a disappointing feeling.
Sacramento finished this season with a 46-36 record, “good” for the No. 9 seed in the Western Conference playoffs. He finished 48-34 a year ago, which gave him third place and home-court advantage in his first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors.
However, things change quickly in the league, and the Kings have learned that the hard way this season.
Kings general manager Monte McNair and Co. had good intentions in “bringing things back” with the same core and essentially the same team as last season. It was cute. It was inspiring. This gave the players confidence – importantly – that the front office had confidence in the group’s abilities as is. But while the Kings relied on consistency and cohesion, the rest of the West was aggressive, took action and improved.
“Obviously, it’s a disappointing ending,” Kings star point guard De’Aaron Fox said Monday. “We wanted to keep playing for more. I don’t think we’ve been bad this year, but obviously the West has gotten tougher and I don’t think we’ve been up to the task.
“We can look at countless games where we had the lead or games we should have won, and you look back on it and it definitely bit us in the back towards the end of the season.”
No season will be perfect. There will be ups and downs. Injuries. Collapses. Adversity, etc.
But one of the more bizarre trends that hung over the Kings like a cloud this season was losing games where they once had significant leads and falling to below-average teams.
The Kings were 15-8 against six of the eight Western Conference playoff teams this season: 4-0 vs. Los Angeles Lakers, 3-1 vs. Denver Nuggets, 2-1 vs. Timberwolves of Minnesota and 2-2 against Oklahoma City. Thunder, Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix Suns. For comparison, Sacramento has lost to non-playoff teams including the Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, Portland Trail Blazers and Washington Wizards (via The Athletic).
After the first time, you’re like, “Okay, this is happening.” » But when first times became a notorious theme of this team, it turned into a growing concern — and, ultimately, the whole difference in how the season ended.
If the Kings hadn’t let five or six of those games slip away, they wouldn’t have spoken to the media Monday morning. They would make the first round of the playoffs for the second straight season.
Those “what ifs” weighed heavily on Kings second-year forward Keegan Murray.
“That’s a big thing that I kind of remember,” Murray admitted. “I feel like there’s a lot of games, I think we had a stretch in the last few weeks where we had a 20-point lead and we couldn’t maintain that lead. And you see the bigger things in the games in the middle of the year that we should have won and we lost.
“Obviously over the course of the season you’re going to have some close games, and you’re not going to win every close game, but I felt like a lot of the games were easily controllable, so it’s obviously frustrating and Disappointing. It’s just something I feel as a team we need to improve on.
There is no point in playing the blame game after a disappointing end to the season. But the dozen Kings players who spoke Monday seemed to agree on two things about why and how their season ended earlier than they would have liked. From what they were able to control, these were winnable losses. What they are not necessarily responsible for controlling is the personal aspect.
The Kings have seen the West improve, and it will only get tougher in the future. That responsibility falls on the front office, which has a big offseason coming up with important decisions to make. Those will come later.
For now, one thing is certain: 10 years ago, maybe five years ago, this team and this city would have celebrated a 46-win season. But after experiencing a season full of expectations for the first time in a long time, reality set in for the Kings.
How they respond next season will be the real test, and how they move from a good to a great team could make all the difference.
SACRAMENTO — About a year ago Monday, the energy in the Golden 1 Center media room during the Kings’ exit interviews was high, positive and hopeful.
Their magical 2022-23 NBA season ended in heartbreaking fashion, but they ended a 16-season playoff drought while reinstilling a sense of promise for the future in the basketball-loving city of Sacramento. ball.
But after finishing the 2023-24 season two wins short of last season’s record while dropping six spots in the standings, the mood was much different from the players Monday morning at Golden 1.
And it was summed up perfectly by one word repeated on the podium: Disappointment.
“The way it ended is really, really disappointing,” Kings star center Domantas Sabonis said during his exit interview. “It’s frustrating. It’s hard to even watch the playoffs, knowing we could contend there.
“So the fact that we’re not in the playoffs is definitely hard to swallow right now.”
The other 11 players who spoke to reporters Monday echoed that sentiment.
Sure, the Kings are going in the right direction, and compared to where this franchise has been for nearly two decades, a 46-win season isn’t great.
But that wasn’t and isn’t the mindset of this team that wants more.
“I think everyone is still trying to deal with the abruptness of the end of the season,” Harrison Barnes said. “But I think when you look at all the goals we had going into the season, I think the goal was to make the playoffs. So to miss that is a bit of a disappointing feeling.
Sacramento finished this season with a 46-36 record, “good” for the No. 9 seed in the Western Conference playoffs. He finished 48-34 a year ago, which gave him third place and home-court advantage in his first-round playoff series against the Golden State Warriors.
However, things change quickly in the league, and the Kings have learned that the hard way this season.
Kings general manager Monte McNair and Co. had good intentions in “bringing things back” with the same core and essentially the same team as last season. It was cute. It was inspiring. This gave the players confidence – importantly – that the front office had confidence in the group’s abilities as is. But while the Kings relied on consistency and cohesion, the rest of the West was aggressive, took action and improved.
“Obviously, it’s a disappointing ending,” Kings star point guard De’Aaron Fox said Monday. “We wanted to keep playing for more. I don’t think we’ve been bad this year, but obviously the West has gotten tougher and I don’t think we’ve been up to the task.
“We can look at countless games where we had the lead or games we should have won, and you look back on it and it definitely bit us in the back towards the end of the season.”
No season will be perfect. There will be ups and downs. Injuries. Collapses. Adversity, etc.
But one of the more bizarre trends that hung over the Kings like a cloud this season was losing games where they once had significant leads and falling to below-average teams.
The Kings were 15-8 against six of the eight Western Conference playoff teams this season: 4-0 vs. Los Angeles Lakers, 3-1 vs. Denver Nuggets, 2-1 vs. Timberwolves of Minnesota and 2-2 against Oklahoma City. Thunder, Los Angeles Clippers and Phoenix Suns. For comparison, Sacramento has lost to non-playoff teams including the Charlotte Hornets, Detroit Pistons, Houston Rockets, Portland Trail Blazers and Washington Wizards (via The Athletic).
After the first time, you’re like, “Okay, this is happening.” » But when first times became a notorious theme of this team, it turned into a growing concern — and, ultimately, the whole difference in how the season ended.
If the Kings hadn’t let five or six of those games slip away, they wouldn’t have spoken to the media Monday morning. They would make the first round of the playoffs for the second straight season.
Those “what ifs” weighed heavily on Kings second-year forward Keegan Murray.
“That’s a big thing that I kind of remember,” Murray admitted. “I feel like there’s a lot of games, I think we had a stretch in the last few weeks where we had a 20-point lead and we couldn’t maintain that lead. And you see the bigger things in the games in the middle of the year that we should have won and we lost.
“Obviously over the course of the season you’re going to have some close games, and you’re not going to win every close game, but I felt like a lot of the games were easily controllable, so it’s obviously frustrating and Disappointing. It’s just something I feel as a team we need to improve on.
There is no point in playing the blame game after a disappointing end to the season. But the dozen Kings players who spoke Monday seemed to agree on two things about why and how their season ended earlier than they would have liked. From what they were able to control, these were winnable losses. What they are not necessarily responsible for controlling is the personal aspect.
The Kings have seen the West improve, and it will only get tougher in the future. That responsibility falls on the front office, which has a big offseason coming up with important decisions to make. Those will come later.
For now, one thing is certain: 10 years ago, maybe five years ago, this team and this city would have celebrated a 46-win season. But after experiencing a season full of expectations for the first time in a long time, reality set in for the Kings.
How they respond next season will be the real test, and how they move from a good to a great team could make all the difference.