Opinion: Playoff Hopes Dying Out For The Sacramento Kings

Last October everything seemed cheery and optimistic in the Sacramento Kings community. The roster on paper was filled with talent and the franchise finally hired a coach that only missed the postseason once (not counting last season) in his 27 year coaching career. A perfect equation for the Kings finally snapping their notorious streak of missing the playoffs 9 straight seasons right? Wrong.

Although there has been a share of pleasant surprises for the Kings this season, their record has not been one of them. Right now Sacramento, similar to their squads in the recent past, continues to be ranked in the bottom half of the Western Conference with a record of 12-20.

There was a lot talk and hype, mostly coming from the Sacramento community, that the Kings have finally figured it out after 9 seasons, but unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case.

After 32 games this season, there’s no reason to believe that this team is going anywhere further after the regular season.

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Although they have had convincing wins this season, like sweeping the Toronto Raptors and beating the Indiana Pacers on the road, they have also had countless disappointing losses. The most recent and frustrating one of them all, against the 3-31 Philadelphia 76ers at home last night.

The Kings remain to tease their beloved fans. They reel us in when they show that they can hang with difficult opponents, only to break our hearts and lose our minds when they struggle against inferior competition. No matter how much the franchise changes from the head down, this team still fails to meet their expectations.

There’s no clear reason why the Kings continue to play this way. Is it because this team lacks effort, is it lack of chemistry, or is it because behind the scenes many players are not buying into George Karl’s system?

There are a lot of hypotheses to make for this team that cannot be proven. However, one thing that is clear is that something isn’t right in the organization.

Overall, even with 50 games left in the season, the hopes of the Kings finally making the playoffs are slowly dissolving as the season progresses. There may be some difficult decisions that the Kings front office will have to face going forward with this franchise. If the Kings are unable to regain momentum and turn their season around, major personnel changes are likely to be inevitable.