It may be hard to imagine considering the team's sad past, but the Sacramento Kings have been benefitting from a great deal of luck lately. Unfortunately, it seems like that luck has run out.
Sacramento Kings Injury Luck
We spend so much time discussing team shooting luck and opponent shooting luck, but sometimes, we forget to discuss injury luck. Injuries, like opponent shooting, are largely out of a team's control, and they can fluctuate greatly from season to season.
Over the last two years, the Kings have been incredibly healthy. In 2022-23, the team only lost 57 man games due to injuries, which was the lowest mark in the NBA (per Spotrac). In 2023-24, that number ballooned up to 126, yet that was still the sixth-lowest number in the league. Some of this is due to their personnel (Domantas Sabonis is a notorious iron man), but a lot of this is because the basketball gods were smiling in their favor.
This year, the Kings must not be acting very bold because fortune is not on their side. So far, the Kings have seen Sabonis, DeMar DeRozan, and Malik Monk (three of their five best players) miss time due to injuries. That's not even counting the time that has been missed by Devin Carter and Orlando Robinson.
In total, the Kings have lost 39 man games due to injury – the 11th-highest mark in the league. That doesn't sound terrible (they could be the Memphis Grizzlies, who have already lost 162 man games to injury), but that's because the injury bug didn't bite them until the last few weeks (Monk went down on November 10 against the Phoenix Suns).
If the Kings continue at their current rate, the team will have 213 man games lost due to injury. That's more games than they've lost in the last two years combined due to injury.
Of course, there is always the chance that this recent slew of injuries is just a blip on the radar (fingers crossed). But if that's not the case and this continues, the Kings better hope they can get contributions from unlikely sources.