Kings fans would be justified if they showed up with paper bags over their heads.
It would have been warranted if they stayed away from Golden 1 Center for the last month as the team continued to toil at the bottom of the Western Conference. They wouldn't have to apologize for picking apathy over shelling out hard-earned dollars.
This, of course, is because the Sacramento Kings have missed the playoffs for an NBA-record 16th straight season.
Read that again. That's almost a generation without a playoff game in a league where the once-hapless Warriors, Clippers, Grizzlies and Suns have gone from the lottery to varying degrees of viable. There are fans somewhere in Sacramento proper getting driver's licenses having never seen a postseason game featuring their favorite team.
Yet Kings fans remain engaged and passionate — and they continue to show up, with Sacramento averaging over 14,000 per game this season at Downtown Commons.
Kings fans deserve far better than what they've been given. There's no doubt about that.
"I don't think we have a homecourt advantage here," Kings interim coach Alvin Gentry said before Tuesday's home finale against New Orleans. "And it hasn't been because of the fans. It's been because of our play."
The Kings' struggles
Golden 1 Center had some down times during the 2021-22 season. The vomiting courtside fan the night before Luke Walton was fired as coach, the Lakers takeover in late November, losing to the 76ers despite Philadelphia being without all its key starters. All while the Kings said the goal was to reach the play-in tournament, a bar that always felt too high, given the talent on the roster.
Still, throughout all of it, the atmosphere at Golden 1 Center never reached toxicity. It never hit levels the 2-14 San Francisco 49ers dealt with in 2016, when fans paid for airplanes to fly signs over Levi's Stadium urging owner/CEO Jed York to sell the team or general manager Trent Baalke to get fired. There's been no revolt in Sacramento. Golden 1 this season never felt like the mausoleum it could have been.
"I think we got great fans here. They supported us from day one," said Gentry. "And I don't think they ever wavered at all in the support they had for this team. I think just like everybody else, our goal has to be to find a way that we can put a winning product out on the floor. Because I think these fans deserve it more than anything. For the support they give this team and the way they back this team. We gotta find a way to make sure we reward them back."
Despite being eliminated from the play-in Sunday against the Warriors, fans in Sacramento showed up for a meaningless game against the Zion Williams-less Pelicans on Tuesday in the home finale. Fans stood and cheered while Metallica's "Enter Sandman" played at the start of the fourth quarter. Even while the Kings were down 11, en route to finishing their home campaign with a miserable 16-25 record. The cowbells were alive and well. The boo-birds were dead.
Perhaps because there's a hint of optimism for next year. Maybe something is being built and 2021-22 will go down as a part of the slow burn toward an explosive playoff run down the line, where Sacramento's downtown venue will finally feel like ARCO Arena in its heyday.
General manager Monte McNair has done well in the draft, taking Tyrese Haliburton and Davion Mitchell, which should give Kings fans optimism for the upcoming picks. McNair doesn't seem like the type who would pass on Luka Doncic or Trae Young for Marvin Bagley, at least.
Sabonis and Fox
With Domantas Sabonis and De'Aaron Fox likely anchoring a far better group of role players — like Mitchell, Donte DiVicenzo, and others — the Kings at least have a path toward improving. And they didn't send away any of their future draft picks in the deals ahead of the trade deadline. They're expected to have a top-10 pick and could even land in the top five with a little luck in the lottery.
As polarizing as trading Haliburton for Sabonis was, it gave the Kings that path. A true scorer on the wing, perhaps an off-guard or power forward, could set things further in motion. The Justin Holiday and Trey Lyles spots in the starting lineup could certainly use an upgrade, pushing those two in reserve roles that better suit a team with playoff aspirations.
Gentry, who may not be around next season after getting the interim coaching job following Walton, thinks a full offseason with Sabonis and other newcomers could lead toward being more competitive next season. After all, Sacramento will finish only a handful of games outside of the play-in tournament, and only had Fox and Sabonis together for 13 games (they finished 5-8 in those contests).
"I think given the situation and if you go through a training camp with the guys that we have now, and the chemistry can improve over that," Gentry said. "Yeah, I think we're close. I think we're very close."
Things feel slightly different around the team after the series of trades in February. DiVincenzo, in particular, feels like someone who embodies the hard-nosed culture it's going to take to end the NBA's longest postseason drought. Mitchell and Sabonis also feel like players willing to row the boat in the same direction for a franchise that's been plagued by a general lack of accountability for years.
"I think our step, our growth, going into the offseason going into next year, we have to have guys that are on the same page," DiVincenzo said Sunday. "We have to have everybody on the same page. Coaching staff, performance staff, players, everybody. When everybody's on the same page and you know there's accountability top to bottom, you know what you're getting every single day. You can deal with a loss, then you can build off a loss and you can do things when you have a cemented foundation. And I think that's something that we're trying to work on here, we're trying to build off of."
What that looks like, exactly, depends largely on how the team handles its offseason. Upgrading the roster for the long term might mean having to trade wing Harrison Barnes, and his remaining $18.3 million salary for next season, for a younger player and/or draft capital. Big man Richaun Holmes, who has three more years on his contract after a dramatic season, on and off the court, might also not be a longterm fit with Sabonis around.
Then there's Gentry, who seems unlikely to come back, meaning a new system might be in place next season, making it hard to know exactly what trajectory the roster will be on this time next year.
But one thing feels certain: Kings fans will show up, no matter what. Because if they're going to keep supporting the Kings wholeheartedly after 16 seasons of missing the playoffs, they can stick through just about anything. And they deserve that feeling of the long climb back.
