Can Kings Replicate Warriors’ Journey to Relevancy?
By Segun Giwa
The Sacramento Kings have been buried in mediocrity for the past ten or so years, but things might finally be changing sooner rather than later.
Despite last season’s firing of Mike Malone after a surprisingly decent 11-13 start, the clash of mega egos between future Hall of Fame Coach George Karl and superstar big man DeMarcus Cousins, and an off-season with some questionable moves that saw them trade sharp shooter Nik Stauskas to Philadelphia for basically nothing as well as passing over dynamic point guard Emmanuel Mudiay in the draft, the Kings aren’t…terrible.
In fact, they were my preseason pick to snag the 8th seed in the West. If my prediction comes true, they’ll still be a ways away from competing with their NorCal neighbors in the Bay Area, but they’ll be trending the right way.
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What will it take for the Kings to make the jump to contender status like the Warriors did a couple of seasons ago?
The Kings’ franchise reminds me of the Warriors franchise before the Warriors became good. The Kings have one of the more loyal fan bases in the league, which set the world record for crowd noise in 2013 at 122.6 decibels.
And who could forget the crazy home court advantage Sacramento had when they were title contenders in the early 2000s? Much like Warriors’ fans in the 2000s decade, Kings’s fans continue to come to the games despite the below average on court product. Look at the announcer’s faces when they talk about what they thought was the last Kings game in Sacramento in 2011:
Luckily for the fans of Sacramento, the unpopular family that owned the Kings, the Maloofs, sold the franchise to Vivek Ranadive, who then proceeded to make plans to build a brand new arena in downtown Sacramento. Similar to the purchase of the Warriors by Joe Lacob from Chris Cohan a few years ago, the purchase of the Kings by Ranadive installed new hope in the fan base and insured a new, different era was to follow.
So Ranadive and the Sacramento front office remains a laughingstock, but with arguably the best center in the league and a future Hall of Fame coach, things could change at any moment for the Kings.
As a life long Warrior fan, I know what the Kings’ fan base is going through right now. They’ve kind of become my second team…like the loveable loser you subconsciously root for, especially against the big dogs of the Western Conference like the Clippers, Thunder, etc.
The Kings have a franchise cornerstone in Cousins, but it’s up to management to put a team (of shooters, think Dwight Howard during his Orlando Magic days) around him that can succeed like the Warriors did with Stephen Curry. It will be interesting to see how the Sacramento franchise evolves in the next few years.