Welcome back to the newsletter that exists because watching the Kings do this to us in private wasn't painful enough. We needed witnesses.
It's been a week. The NBA crowned a champion, the offseason kicked off, and Sacramento spent all of it doing what we do best: watching other people enjoy the things that used to be ours. Grab a beer. This one's a journey.
THE DAMAGE REPORT
Let's just say it. Mike Brown won the NBA Finals.
Yes, that Mike Brown. The one we fired midway through last season. The first unanimous Coach of the Year in NBA history, the guy who snapped our two-decade playoff drought, then got walked out the door, then went to New York and immediately won a championship. It's the Knicks' first title since 1973 and their third in franchise history. So Mike Brown now has a ring. We have a 22-60 record and a coupon for emotional damage.
And if one ex-coach with a ring wasn't enough, allow us to introduce another. Mike Malone won the 2023 NBA championship as head coach of the Denver Nuggets, the franchise's first-ever title. Malone, of course, also coached the Kings, before we fired him too. So that's two former Sacramento head coaches holding championship rings. At this point it's not a coincidence, it's a pattern. Get hired by the Kings, get fired by the Kings, go win a title in peace. We should put it on the recruiting brochure.
There's a recurring theme in Sacramento where coaches leave us and ascend directly into the light. We are not a basketball team so much as a finishing school for championship coaches. You come here, you suffer, you graduate, you win it all somewhere with a competent front office. We're basically a study-abroad program.
We are not a basketball team so much as a finishing school for championship coaches.
THE BETRAYAL DESK
And then there's De'Aaron Fox.
Our old franchise point guard, the one who wanted out, made it all the way to the Finals with the Spurs. Which sounds like a "one that got away" story until you actually watch the tape. Fox averaged 12.8 points on 34.2% shooting, including 25% from three across the series. He never recaptured his form after a high-ankle sprain, and capped it with a 3-of-15, 1-of-8 Game 5.
In Game 4, with the Spurs up one and the game in his hands, Fox tried a layup instead of dribbling out the clock and got it blocked by OG Anunoby, handing the Knicks the ball.
We're not going to dance on this. Okay, we're going to dance a little. For years we heard about how Sacramento held him back, and then he got to the biggest stage of his career and shot 34%. Sometimes the universe writes the column for you. We're just here to format it.
BEAM OR BUST
This week's verdict, offseason edition:
🟢 LIT THE BEAM- Scott Perry's group chat. The draft is in a week and the Kings hold the No. 7 pick in what everyone agrees is a genuinely loaded guard class. For once, "we have a top-10 pick" is exciting instead of a symptom.
🔴 TOTAL BUST- The lottery, again. We went 22-60 and still only landed seventh. We did the losing. We did not get the reward for the losing. Classic us.
THE LONG VIEW
Two real things are happening, and they're both worth watching.
First, the draft. June 23-24. The Kings are at No. 7 and need a point guard badly, since we haven't had a real young one since you-know-who left for his 34%-shooting destiny. The four names tied to Sacramento: Arkansas guard Darius Acuff Jr., Louisville guard Mikel Brown Jr., Houston's Kingston Flemings, and Illinois guard Keaton Wagler. It's widely believed Acuff is Sacramento's top target. Fun wrinkle: GM Scott Perry actually coached Acuff's father in college. Nothing says modern NBA roster-building like "I knew your dad."'
Second, the Sabonis situation. The Kings and Hornets have held exploratory talks centered on Domantas Sabonis, with one framework sending Miles Bridges, Josh Green and a first-round pick to Sacramento. A deal isn't imminent and is unlikely before the June 23 draft, with the Kings hoping to land one of Charlotte's picks (Nos. 14 and 18) while the Hornets would rather keep them and revisit later. The sticking point, as always, is that Sabonis is owed $45.5 million next season and $48.6 million the year after, after playing just 19 games last year following knee surgery. Moving that contract is the whole offseason in a nutshell.
So here's where we are: two of our old coaches have rings, our old point guard has a cautionary tale, and we have a lottery pick and a very expensive big man we're trying to FedEx to Charlotte. It's not glory. But it's direction, and after the year we had, direction feels like a parade.
We'll be here next Tuesday, draft night looming, beers cold, expectations managed into the floor where they belong. Because that's the deal. Light the beam over the rebuild. It's still our beam.
See you next week. The draft will give us something new to process. It always does.
Forward this to a Kings fan who suffers alongside you.