The Sacramento Kings have had a historically bad season, though things have picked up since their crazy losing streak ended. Co-owner Vivek Ranadive blamed the team's poor performance on the barrage of injuries they faced. While he's not wrong, there is definitely more to it than that.
Long before injuries ravaged the team, basically every pundit, sports reporter, and fan predicted a terrible season for the Kings. The biggest problem was the poorly constructed roster, one heavily weighted towards shoot-first guards and severely lacking when it came to defense.
Making the situation even worse was the fact that the new Sacramento front office was unable to move the contracts for DeMar DeRozan, Zach LaVine, and Domantas Sabonis. They are expensive, preventing the Kings from making any big changes to correct the problems built into the roster.
Then there's Doug Christie. He was hired by the Kings to be the head coach after they made the dubious choice to fire Mike Brown. Christie is a rookie himself who often seems ill-suited for the job in general, let alone heading up a major rebuilding process that's driven by development.
Ranadive is right about the injuries in one way
Every year, the Kings have a Bollywood Night in Sacramento. During that recent event, Ranadive was asked about the rough season that's almost over. He put a lot of the blame on the seemingly endless string of injuries the Kings have faced all season long, which isn't completely incorrect.
There's no doubt that never having your starting lineup play together once all season is a problem. It's hard to build any sort of momentum from game to game when your coaching staff has no idea what the roster is going to look like. At the same time, that's not why the season went so poorly.
A poorly constructed roster, bad contracts, and a rookie head coach were already major problems before the season started. All of the injuries were just pouring gasoline on a fire that was already burning. Now, the Kings have to figure out how to put the fire out and fix these problems.
To be fair, Ranadive isn't going to publicly slam his front office, head coach, or All-Stars in an interview. Of course, he'll put the blame on another mitigating circumstance, like the injuries the team has had to deal with. For the Kings to thrive, they're going to need more than just staying healthy.