Breaking down the playoff fight for the Sacramento Kings

With the NBA Playoffs just around the corner, the Sacramento Kings are still fighting for their playoff lives — let’s break down their playoff hunt.

The good news is that the Sacramento Kings have been competitive against the best in the NBA. The Kings took the Golden State Warriors, Milwaukee Bucks, Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Clippers to the brinkat least once — and the Kings had a chance to win almost every game. Three of those games were decided by two points or less and the purple and white lost to the Clippers and Timberwolves by seven points.

With team chemistry being an issue for the Boston Celtics as of late, they could be venerable for a loss — and with two matchups in the next week, that could be huge for Sacramento. The schedule also has the New York Knicks playing the Kings squad twice, which gives Sacramento a chance to go undefeated for the week.

This could help the Kings make up some ground in the playoff chase, but the bad news: the Sacramento Kings have sputtered a lot lately.

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With Sacramento losing five out of the last six games in the recent stretch, it has taken the Kings out of the driver’s seat to reach the playoffs.

Now the Kings will need help from other teams to reach the post season. The purple and white must beat the teams that they are supposed to win against and steal a few victories from teams that our ranked higher in the standings — all while getting help from other teams (like the Lakers tonight).

In all likelihood, it will come down to the very last week of the play and possibly the last game of the season to determine who grabs the last ticket to the big show, similar to what happened with the Denver Nuggets last season.

Let’s explore my win/loss projections. I have the Clippers at 45-37 grabbing the 7th spot. Next up is the Spurs at 44-38 to secure the last playoff spot, followed by the Kings at 43-39 — just missing out on the post season for the thirteenth straight year.

Should the Kings tie with either of those teams, Sacramento would get in over the Spurs and lose to the Clippers. They also lost the tie-breaker with the Los Angeles Lakers. As a result, it would help the Kings if the Clippers grab the seventh spot in the standings, pushing the Spurs to the 8th seed.

But, here is where it gets tricky for this Kings team. All year-long the members of this team have been resilient at staying together as one solid unit and after time when it looks like the game might be over, this squad collectively puts together offense and defense to pull off a comeback.

As we head down the stretch, the Sacramento Kings have shown they can win when the odds are stacked against them, which could help them win tough games to secure a playoff spot. The hometown team must put it all together — the next stage is for Sacramento to approach every game as a do-or-die playoff game.

Final thoughts

It will be hard to speculate what the opponents will do towards the end of the season. So many variables can effect the Kings playoff chances.

Do other teams rest their star players when they can’t move up in the standings? Are there injuries? Do we see normally teams mail it in early? These could all help or hurt the Kings.

Despite loss to Clippers, playoffs remain real possibility for Kings. dark. Next

If Sactown does miss the playoffs the two games that will stick out is the Timberwolves and the Clippers game. The Timberwolves are a team the Kings should have beat and Clippers game essentially locked them in over Sacramento. As proven in the past (Denver Nuggets last year) one game can be the difference between making the playoffs and going home for the summer. Of course, the Nuggets learned from it and now sit in second place in the West this year, but let’s hope the Kings don’t have to learn the hard way.

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