Sports

The Sacramento Kings are in trouble. After pulling out that amazing victory against the Los Angeles Lakers in overtime, the Kings seem to have completely fallen apart and lost three in a row. I haven’t decided yet if I want to make all the excuses or tell you that the Kings are a good enough team that they don’t deserve excuses; they should have won at least one of these games. It was bad enough losing to the Golden State Warriors for the second time in five days, but to lose twice in a row to the Houston Rockets, a team that had a .268 win record last year, is just too much. And maybe what happened is that the Kings underestimated the Rockets; the Rockets did lose the first three games of the season and looked like they might be repeating last year’s performance. But I think the Kings are smart enough to know that you can never underestimate anyone, and they should have at least been able to make the necessary adjustments and put up a fight in the second game. Oh, did I mention that they lost these games by 18 and 25??? Yes, completely embarrassing. It’s true De’Aaron Fox was out with an ankle sprain, and yes, it’s early in the season, but Kings fans can’t take this flashback to the torture we were put through for all those years.

So what happened? Well, one of the Kings’ goals for this year was to be more physical on defense, and maybe that’s what they were trying to do, but they certainly haven’t figured it out yet; they ended up sending the Rockets to the free throw line 22 times in the first half of Monday’s game. And while no one expected the Kings to turn around this season and have an amazing defense, we at least expected the Kings to show us the amazing offense they were known for last year, but their offense didn’t show up either. It’s pretty bad when your leading scorer is a second-year player, Keon Ellis, a guy we barely know. But shoutout to Ellis for making the most of garbage time.

I think I’m done ranting for today. I’m going to try to stay positive and say that the Kings should bounce back against the Portland Trailblazers at home on Wednesday, November 8th. I wasn’t wrong earlier when I said it was early in the season; there is lots of basketball left to be played. The Kings have a chance to show us they weren’t wrong when they said they were championship contenders at home against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday, November 10th, at home against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday, November 13th, and at Los Angeles against the Lakers on Wednesday, November 15th.