Kings of inconsistency: Can Sacramento recreate run to NBA playoffs after All-Star break?

Who are the Sacramento Kings and how will this season be remembered?

At this time a year ago, people were plotting parade routes and wondering what was to come as the Kings made their way back to the playoffs for the first time since 2006. A long-suffering city rejoiced and people screamed “Light the Beam” as the Kings brought winning basketball back to Sacramento.

Earlier this month, they were booed off the floor at home following a double-digit loss to the downtrodden Detroit Pistons, who came in with the worst record in the NBA at 6-43.

The Pistons weren’t just a bad basketball team. They were missing their two leading scorers, Cade Cunningham and Bojan Bogdanovic. A number of fans in the lower bowl at Golden 1 Center were heard muttering expletives to themselves as they headed for the exits, cursing the team’s tendency to fall flat against undermanned and inferior opponents.

Kings center Domantas Sabonis bemoaned his team’s lackluster effort in the loss to the lowly Pistons.

“We’ve just got to come out and play,” Sabonis said. “We’ve just got to respect each opponent no matter who’s on the court and fight for your team. We’ve got to play to a certain standard that we believe we have.”

Forty-eight hours later, they did.

The Kings turned in one of their finest performances of the season, beating two-time MVP Nikola Jokic and the defending champion Denver Nuggets by 29 points.

“This was probably the best game we’ve had from start to finish,” Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox said. “We started the game the right way and I think we finished the game the right way. Obviously, it doesn’t erase what happened (against Detroit), but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

Wednesday, in their last game before Sunday’s All-Star Game, the Kings beat the Nuggets again, 102-98, improving to 3-0 against them this season. But before that? They had lost four of five. The 2023-24 NBA season has taken Sacramento on a wild roller-coaster ride with a stomach-turning series of twists and turns. The up-and-down nature of this campaign has left the Kings searching for consistency and an identity as they come out of the All-Star break to make another playoff push. As with any NBA team, the questions, answers and reasons are both simple and complex.

Season feels different

Kings coach Mike Brown is demanding better defense while general manager Monte McNair wants last season’s record-setting offense to return, but both are calling for consistency. McNair used some variation of that word four times during a 25-minute news conference earlier this month while noting the Kings were still on pace to match last season’s total of 48 wins.

“I think if we were more consistent, we would be further up in the standings for sure,” McNair said. “I think the positive to take from it is, for every loss that doesn’t feel good, that means we’ve also had some pretty good wins if we’re still on the same pace.”

The Kings (31-23) are trying to build on last year’s success after going to the playoffs as the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference, ending the longest playoff drought in NBA history after 16 consecutive losing seasons.

This season feels different with angst and expectations often overriding the sense of excitement.

Sacramento’s record through 54 games is the same as it was a year ago, but the West has gotten stronger and the Kings are in a much more precarious position with 28 games remaining in the regular season. The top six teams in the West will earn automatic playoff berths. The next four teams will have to fight their way in through the play-in tournament.

The Kings are currently eighth in the West, one of four teams within 1 ½ games of each other, all vying for the fifth and sixth seeds. This group includes the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks. The Los Angeles Lakers and Golden State Warriors are also within striking distance and coming on strong.

The Kings have beaten the Minnesota Timberwolves, Oklahoma City Thunder, Nuggets, Suns and Mavericks, five of the top seven teams in the West. They also have wins over the Cleveland Cavaliers and Indiana Pacers. However, they have five losses to the Houston Rockets (2), Portland Trail Blazers, Charlotte Hornets and Pistons — some of the worst teams in the league — by margins of seven, 13, 17, 18 and 25 points.

Squandering opportunities

The Kings can’t keep squandering opportunities to increase their win total if they want to secure an automatic playoff bid. Kings forward Harrison Barnes, an 11-year NBA veteran who won a championship with the Warriors in 2015, said the games before and after the All-Star break would be critical to the team’s mission.

“When you look at the standings, all these games, they matter,” Barnes said. “They matter come April when you’re looking at a game here or a game there. It’s easy sometimes to say, OK, the break is around the corner, and take your foot off the gas, but these are really important games for us and what we’re trying to accomplish.”

Brown, who won one NBA championship as an assistant with the San Antonio Spurs in 2003 and three more as an assistant with the Warriors, agreed that every game counts.

“The West is so competitive,” Brown said. “You look at a team like the Lakers. They had two or three really big wins on the road, so they’re coming. Golden State is eventually going to find their rhythm and come, especially with the way (Jonathan) Kuminga is playing. There’s no easy games in the West. We have to be on our p’s and q’s from this point forward, and hopefully we will so we can figure out where we’re going to be seeded come playoff time.”

Offense-defense debate

Brown has maintained since the start of training camp that defense will be the key to any postseason success in Sacramento. The emphasis on defense with more effort and physicality on that end of the floor has seemingly contributed to a drop in scoring as Sacramento’s stable of weary legged shooters struggles to adjust.

The Kings set a record with the highest offensive rating (118.6) in NBA history last season. This season, they are 14th in the league in offensive rating (116.1). Brown is willing to sacrifice something offensively to achieve the desired results on defense.

“Sometimes in this business, you’ve got to take chances,” Brown said. “You’ve got to try to shake things up in a way that not a lot of people are happy about or excited about, especially if it’s ugly at first and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to work, but you’ve got to try to shake things up to push the limits of your team to challenge them in order to truly be ready come the postseason to compete for a championship.”

McNair wants good defense, too, but he isn’t pleased with the offensive regression.

“We know we’ve got to improve the offense back closer to what it was last year,” McNair said. “If we do that, I think we can make some noise, but we’ve got some work to do because the West is tough 1 to 12 or 13 this year and every game is going to be a dogfight.”

Trade deadline

After months of trade rumors and speculation, the Kings chose to stand pat at the NBA trade deadline. They were linked to the likes of OG Anunoby, Pascal Siakam, Kyle Kuzma and Zach LaVine, but ultimately McNair and assistant general manager Wes Wilcox decided to keep the roster intact.

“We’re always active in trying to see what’s out there, but weighing that against what we already have here,” McNair said. “Obviously this year after exploring those opportunities, we ended up keeping this group together. We know the job is never done. We’ll continue to vet those opportunities to make our team better, but we’re excited for what we’ve got going forward.”

The Kings will likely explore the market again this summer, but this is the team that will lead them into the stretch run.

All-Star snubs

Fox and Sabonis went to the All-Star Game together last season and then became All-NBA Third Team selections for the first time in their respective careers. Somehow, neither was chosen to participate in this year’s All-Star Game.

Fox said he didn’t care about being passed over despite playing like an MVP candidate early in the season. He was more perturbed by the omission of Sabonis, who leads the NBA in rebounding, double-doubles and triple-doubles.

“For me, I had no feelings,” Fox said. “I get to take a break, but for Domas, I definitely think he deserves to be there. He’s almost averaging a triple-double. I’m seeing stuff on Twitter like he’s putting up numbers that only Jokic and Wilt (Chamberlain) have put up, and I think he’s top 10 in the MVP race. I think the other nine guys were all All-Stars, so I definitely think he deserves to be there.”

Keegan Murray, a second-year forward from Iowa who was chosen to compete in the Rising Stars Challenge, will be Sacramento’s only representative at All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis barring a last-minute injury replacement.

Injuries

The Kings were one of the healthiest teams in the NBA last season as they made a run to the playoffs for the first time since 2006. They haven’t been as fortunate this season with Fox, Murray, Kevin Huerter, Malik Monk, Trey Lyles, Alex Len, Keon Ellis, Sasha Vezenkov and Chris Duarte all missing games due to injuries.

Kings players lost a total of 54 games due to injuries in 2022-23, according to Spotrac. This season, they’re already up to 66.

Vezenkov, a former Olympiacos star who was named EuroLeague MVP in 2023, was Sacramento’s biggest offseason addition after the front office chose to keep the core of last year’s team intact. Vezenkov has been in and out of Brown’s rotation while adapting to a new country and the NBA game, but injuries have been the biggest issue in recent weeks.

Vezenkov recently returned after missing seven games with a moderate right ankle sprain, but he appeared in only two games before reinjuring the ankle during practice last weekend. The Kings announced Vezenkov has been diagnosed with a grade-3 right ankle sprain. He will be reevaluated in four to six weeks.

Schedule

The Kings played 15 of their last 19 games on the road leading into the All-Star break, but the schedule could work in their favor over the last eight weeks of the season.

The Kings are 15-9 at home and 15-14 on the road. They played 30 of their first 54 games on the road, including a recent seven-game, 13-day, 7,000-mile trip that took them from California to Texas, Tennessee, Florida, Indianapolis, Illinois and Ohio.

Following the All-Star break, the Kings will play 17 of their last 28 games at home, including eight of their last 12. The schedule will feature a six-game homestand from March 7-18, a five-game homestand from March 25-April 2 and a three-game homestand to end the regular season.

Brown is confident in his roster going into the stretch run.

“I believe in this group and I was a proponent of bringing the group back,” Brown said. “We had a good first year, but we need to take steps and we need to see if this group and this nucleus can take steps, and I think we have. ... So, I really believe in this group. I really feel like they believe in each other, so now it’s time to go get it.”