The end of the regular season is getting closer and closer. Being that the Sacramento Kings will not be in the Playoffs, that means their season is also pretty much over. But these last several games offer the Kings a borderline consequences free environment to get ready for next year.
Sacramento is in a bad way. They've got a rookie head coach, a new front office, a roster made up of rookies and old heads, and a lot of frustrated fans. With a record of 13 and 46, they are bordering on mathematical elimination from the Playoffs. It would take multiple miracles to make that happen.
With 23 games left in the season, the Kings would need to win every game and several other teams would have to lose a lot of games to even sneak into the Play-In. Too much needs to go right in a season where things have gone mostly wrong for that scenario to work out for Sacramento.
That doesn't mean these last several games don't matter to the Kings. In fact, they could turn out to be the most important games Sacramento has played in years. With the Playoffs out of reach, they give this franchise a chance to put players and lines on the court who don't usually get minutes.
The Kings need to turn "garbage time" into "rebuild time"
Right now, Sacramento has an interesting assortment of rookies, young players, G Leaguers, and new additions who they don't exactly know what to do with yet. When you're trying to win games, you might not give these guys the kinds of minutes they could get when the stakes are much lower.
Fans saw the impact of that earlier this season. Mutliple injuries forced the Kings to let their rookies play more. That led to the quick growth of Maxime Raynaud and Nique Clifford, not to mention signing Dylan Cardwell to a full NBA contract. This time could also be used on other young players.
While De'Andre Hunter, Zach LaVine, and Domantas Sabonis being out for the rest of the season is rough, it means that rookies and young guns get a lot more minutes. That becomes increased development time as well as real opportunities to see how they work and grow together.
With Keegan Murray back and Cardwell hopefully returning soon, this opportunity becomes even bigger. As the Kings move into the offseason, this supposed "garbage time" give them a unique opportunity to really assess what they have on their current roster and plan for future changes.