Savoy is injured, DeRozan is "bad", and the Kings become the least promising team in the West

Sports Weekly All-Media Reporter Li Hui

The Sacramento Kings are going through their darkest moment.

On November 21st, the Kings defeated the Grizzlies by 41 points in an away game and suffered a 7-game losing streak. Their record came to 3 wins and 13 losses, ranking 14th in the Western Conference, only better than the New Orleans Pelicans. But to a certain extent, the Kings are currently the most hopeless team in the entire Western Conference, because not only do they have poor combat capabilities, they do not even have any players worthy of relying on now or in the future.

Before today's game, the Kings received bad news that the team's core Sabonis will miss at least 3 weeks due to injury. This season, despite the decline in data, Sabonis can still hand over 17.3 points, 12.3 rebounds and 3.7 assists. He is the absolute core of the team's inside line. After Sabonis Jr. was injured, the Kings' originally weak inside line became even more vulnerable. Against the Grizzlies, they could only field the inside combination of Achiuwa + Eubanks. Both of them received basic salary contracts and their strength was limited.

Faced with such a weak inside combination, the Grizzlies' young players continued to attack the basket, scoring 56 points in the penalty area, and leading in rebounds 49 to 32.

Looking at the paper strength, the Kings' perimeter configuration is not bad. They have DeRozan, LaVine, Schroeder, Wei Shao, Monk and other players that fans are familiar with, and the overall performance of these players last season was not bad. , but their chemical reaction this season is very poor. Schroeder, who shined in the European Cup, signed with the Kings this summer, but after returning to the NBA from the European Cup, he once again became unable to adapt. He was initially a starter and has now been reduced to a substitute, with low efficiency. Wei Shao was on the verge of unemployment before the start of the season, but now he has become the only outside player on the team with some bright spots. The remaining three DeRozan, LaVine and Monk, who played for the Kings last season, have performed poorly this season, especially DeRozan. The 36-year-old is having his worst season since his rookie contract. He averaged 17.9 points per game this season, which is far lower than his career average. Today against the Grizzlies, he only played 15 minutes before exiting the game early.

When the ESPN host talked about DeRozan after the game, he even said directly that it seemed that DeRozan had no interest in playing for the Kings and he should be benched.

In the past 10 years, the Kings only made the playoffs in the 22-23 season, and poor records have become their norm. What’s even more fatal is that the current Kings are a seemingly hopeless team. They don’t have any young players they can rely on. The Mavericks, who also have a poor record, at least have Flagg, and the Pelicans have also emerged with young players like Quinn. At the same time, the Kings do not have players who can truly carry the team. Now the Kings' games are more like players coping with work and going through the motions. Especially for players like LaVine and Wei Shao who have been labeled as data brushes, it seems that in every game now, playing good data is what they care about most. As for the team's record, perhaps they also know that they are unable to change it.

In addition, from a contract point of view, whether it is LaVine, DeRozan, Sabonis, Monk, or Schroeder, their contracts will not expire at the end of this season, which means that if the Kings press the rebuild button, they need to find homes for these players one by one, and this is not easy. After all, their performance this season is not ideal, and they do not have particularly dazzling past performances.

Kings coach Christie said not long ago that the era of the Kings is coming. We don’t know the context in which he said this, but it is obvious that the Kings will struggle for a long time. From all aspects, this team is destined to be difficult to achieve in the short term.