It happened again. The Sacramento Kings were winning against the Toronto Raptors in the first half, only to fall apart in the second. This time, the complete collapse of the team happened in the third quarter. It seems like they're coughing up wins to make sure they get a good lottery pick.
Watching one entire Kings' game feels like a tale of the same team from two incredibly different perspectives. On one side, you have the competent Sacramento squad, which is unrelenting on offense and is actually respectable on defense. That's the team fans get in the first half.
Then, the Kings come out from halftime and completely fall apart. Basketball is a game of momentum shifts, but what Sacramento is doing is on another level. Last night's loss was a prime example of a difficult but unmistakable pattern, though it might actually be one of the worst so far.
By the end of the first half, the Kings were up by a score of 61 to 52. Then the third quarter hit, and the Raptors outscored the Kings 43 to 21. All in one lonely quarter. Both teams scored 27 points in the fourth quarter for a final score of 122 to 109. It was insane to watch live.
The total collapse of the Kings was hopefully on purpose
So, the Kings won the first two quarters and tied the fourth. Somehow, the Raptors collected 22 more points in the third quarter than Sacramento. Again, that one quarter was like watching a completely different game being played by a different squad of Kings.
If it only happened a handful of times, you could write it off as bad luck or a few off games. That's not the case. It's a pattern of total collapse at some point in the second half that keeps happening. Even in their recent wins, there were examples of this. The collapses just weren't bad enough to lose.
This has to be some sort of attempt at tanking to get a better lottery pick in the upcoming draft. It's just strange to watch the Kings play so well in the first half, only to walk on the court in the second and get blown out in one quarter. It was literally one quarter that cost the Kings the game.
Hopefully, this is a tanking situation. If it isn't, that means the Kings are just falling apart at random points in the game just because they're a terrible team. That is an equally likely answer, but it's also the saddest one. It somehow feels better to assume they're losing like this on purpose.