So, the Sacramento Kings are having a rough season, with the last couple of seasons before it not being much better. As such, it might be time to let the beam go. The whole point of it was to celebrate wins. When you rarely win, it just becomes an embarrassing reminder of how bad things are.
Lighting the beam started the same time Mike Brown took over as head coach in 2022-2023. Going into that season, the Kings had not seen the postseason in 16 years. It was the longest playoff drought in the NBA, MLB, MLB, and NFL at that time, which is not something you want to be known for.
Brown successfully coached a Kings team led by the combination of De'Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis to the playoffs, breaking that unfortunate record. It was a big deal for the club and its fans as it was expected to be the beginning of bigger and better things. It was not.
The 2023-2024 season went badly, followed by a terrible start to the 2024-2025 season. The result was the firing of Mike Brown just after Christmas 2024. That directly led to Fox demanding a trade which ended with him on the Spurs. The Kings are still recovering from that rapid downfall.
It's time the Kings stopped lighting the beam
The beam was brought in as a way to celebrate victories, and it worked well during the 2022-2023 season when the Kings were reasonably good. Now, it just seems kind of sad to watch them light the beam, particularly when they've only won a total of six games this season.
Fans and pundits even refer to 2022-2023 as the Beam Team Era because the beam defined that brief moment of success for the Kings. At the same time, that "era" only lasted one season, and culminated in a first round playoff elimination. The decline after that was borderline historic.
Continuing to light the beam after increasingly rare victories comes across as trying to live in the past. It no longer brings the team or the fans together. It just reminds everyone of an era that came to an end way too soon thanks to bad decisions made by the front office and ownership.
For now, the Kings need to put the beam in storage. If the rebuild works out and the Kings are truly competitive, bring it back at that point. Then, lighting the beam will mean something to everyone. It will be a celebration of true success, not a sad distraction from unabridged mediocrity.