The build-up to the 2026-2027 regular season has not been kind to the Sacramento Kings. Between the injuries, the losses, and waiving multiple players, it's become a comedy of accidents and errors that no one finds funny. By now, fan expectations have to be at an all-time low.
Calling last season a debacle for the Kings might be the understatement of the year. They went into 2025-2026 with a rookie head coach and an almost impossibly imbalanced roster. If that wasn't enough, the team was pummeled by what felt like an absurd number of injuries.
After all of that, everyone was hoping for a better 2026-2027, which should have been a slam-dunk given the benchmark set last year. Instead, everything is looking pretty bad. The preseason has not been kind to the Kings and has likely set a bad tone for the regular season.
Meet the new preseason, same as the old preseason
Ben Simmons, Maxime Raynaud, Dylan Cardwell, and Malik Monk are all injured. Simmons is out for the season, with the other three hopefully returning to the lineup in the next few weeks. Both Raynaud and Cardwell are currently expected to miss the start of the season.
Beyond that, the Kings have now waived several players, some of whom had real potential. That list includes Tristen Newton, Elfrid Payton, and, most recently, Adam Flagler. Payton and Flagler feel like real missed opportunities, particularly as support at point guard.
On top of all that, the Kings were the only team in the entire NBA to finish the preseason without a single win. They lost all five games, making them the worst-performing preseason team in the NBA. And that was before the Simmons injury or the waiving of Payton and Flagler.
That's a lot of bad vibes going into the regular season
Staying positive about 2026-2027 is getting increasingly difficult. Frankly, it's all but impossible to ignore how bad things have gotten for Sacramento in such a relatively short period of time. The Kings are going to have to adjust course quickly and with purpose to salvage anything from this season.
What the Kings do with their open roster spots is going to be huge. They have limited room to add players, which they now need to do after losing Simmons and waiving Flagler. Filling these openings with the right players could make or break what little success was plausible this season.
Just because the preseason has gone so badly doesn't mean the regular season will automatically be terrible. It's also not a great sign. It's just hard to feel positive considering how many things have gone wrong in the last couple of weeks, as well as how many bad decisions have been made so far.
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