Kings remain trapped in the basketball purgatory they built after trade deadline

With the 2026 trade deadline now gone, fans of the Sacramento Kings are left looking at all the moves that weren't made. As disappointing as this is, it shouldn't be a surprise given the players and contracts the Kings were trying to move. Fans are just tired of feeling like nothing is changing.

The goal was to move some combination of Domantas Sabonis, Zach LaVine, and DeMar DeRozan before the deadline hit. These three players represent some of the Kings' biggest contracts, two of which are on the top ten list of the worst contracts in the entire league.

In the end, Sacramento only managed to trade away Dennis Schroder, Dario Saric, and Keon Ellis while adding De'Andre Hunter to the roster. And trading Ellis remains a questionable decision at best, one necessitated by Sacramento's mishandling of the young 3&D player's career to date.

Kings' fans are not happy about this at all

For the majority of Sactown's fan base, this is just a repeat of past mistakes made as recently as the last offseason. It was expected that the new front office headed by Scott Perry was going to make big moves to right the ship over the summer. That definitely did not happen.

Fans then hung their hopes on the trade deadline, only to watch the big three trades not get done while other teams made deals for the type of young players needed to fill out Sacramento's rebuild. it has led to some rather unhappy responses online.

That's to be expected. The Sacramento Kings' fanbase has been shockingly loyal and supportive since 1985 to a team that has given them nothing in return. The Kings are last in the West and the league, and don't seem to be doing much to fix the problem. But there's a bigger picture here.

The Kings are in a tough place they put themselves in

Domantas Sabonis and Zach LaVine are limited use players on massive, unwieldy contracts. The number of teams in the league willing to shell out big for two players who are sometimes solid on offense and borderline useless on defense is pretty much limited to the Kings.

Sacramento was never going to move either of these guys before the deadline. To be blunt, it's unlikely that they'll be able to move them before their contracts are up. There's a reason Scott Perry said the rebuild is at least a three year process. It will take that long to move Sabonis and LaVine.

Keep in mind that this is an expression of the reality the Kings face, not a justification for it. They made the trades and signed the contracts that put them in this position in the first place. Sacramento is the architect of their own basketball purgatory, one they have to figure out how to escape.