It’s about time, Sacramento! The Sacramento Kings have at long last broken their 16-year playoff curse as they smashed the Trail Blazers 120-80 to clinch a postseason spot and help them near a Pacific Division title.
What a slog the last 16 years have been for the Sacramento Kings.
Setting a modern NBA record for the longest playoff drought not only irrevocably damaged this franchise during the dawn of the Social Media age, but also having to watch nearly every single other West Coast team go and achieve success must have been a real stinger too.
Obviously, the Kings were never going to surpass the Lakers in terms of popularity during the early years of the Social Media age, but watching the Lakers win three more titles during the drought, the Golden State Warriors form a dynasty and win 4 NBA titles, the Phoenix Suns get Chris Paul, Kevin Durant Devin Booker, and go on an NBA Finals run, and the LA Clippers purge Donald Sterling’s filth and get a multi-billionaire owner in Steve Ballmer to back the franchise while the Kings faded away into a meme was beyond catastrophic for the franchise’s reputation.
The longest, continuously operated NBA franchise, which the Sacramento Kings are as they were founded in 1945, to completely fall out of the public’s eye in a time when the NBA gained an enormous cultural boost and growth is a big reason why the Kings suffered through 16 straight years of missing the playoffs, along with the horrible ownership model under the Maloofs family’s aloof reign.
But no more.
As last night cemented, the Sacramento Kings have finally broken the playoff curse and will be one of the Top-3/4 teams (depending on how the final few games play out) in the Western Conference fighting it out for the NBA championship. And, that game against the Trail Blazers proved they’re a force to be reckon with.
Head coach Mike Brown, the clear presumptive Coach of the Year winner, has shaped this Kings team into the league’s most prolific, efficient scoring offense, while also being one of the most versatile scoring teams as well.
Obviously, beating the Trail Blazers by 40 points, which was led by De’Aaron Fox (18 PTS, 3 REB, 6 AST), Domantas Sabonis (15 PTS, 12 REB, 4 AST), and Kevin Huerter (17 PTS, 4 REB, 4 AST), is an impressive feat of itself and demonstrates how lethal this team truly is, yet the overall season stats are far more impressive in my opinion.
The Kings currently have the best PPG average across the entire league (yes, we’re talking about the Sacramento Kings) as they’ve averaged 121.0 PPG across 76 games played, leaving them a full 3 points on average better than the defending NBA champions Golden State Warriors (118.2 PPG average). Moreover, the Kings are the 4th most efficient field goal making percentage with 43.5/game, even though they’re only the 16th highest team in field goals attempted with 87.6.
Now, what makes the Kings a truly devastating force on the court this season and why they’ve broken such a long playoff streak is not just how efficient they are at scoring points, but also how involved all members of the rotation are in scoring.
The Kings currently are the 4th highest team in average assists generated/game with 27.1, which was evident last night as 5 players (De’Aaron Fox, Domantas Sabonis, Keegan Murray, Malik Monk, Kevin Huerter) scored over 13+ points, and Fox, Huerter, Monk, and Sabonis all scored over 15+ points.
Sure, that may not seem as impressive as Joel Embiid’s NBA leading 33.2 PPG or Nikola Jovic’s triple-double average (well, just about as he’s on 9.9 AST averaged/game), but it really makes the difference when going up against the great NBA teams, such as the Golden State Warriors, Phoenix Suns, Denver Nuggets, Philadelphia 76ers, Boston Celtics, and Milwaukee Bucks, in a playoff series.
So, Kings, fans you’ve finally got something to cheer about in Sacramento for the first time since the California gold rush.
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