As the back end of the NBA season mercifully burns to ash, there are still a few oblong aesthetic joys to be found. Thursday night's action featured son-to-father and father-to-son assists, the hilarious spectacle of Josh Hart and Baylor Scheierman going bomb for bomb in Madison Square Garden, and the Nets losing on purpose by 29 on Fan Appreciation Night in a game, featuring a bunch of guys I'd never heard of and also this couple on the Jumbotron. Many of the contests involve at least one party trying to lose, whether for draft position or seeding reasons, which does not lead to what most people would call nice-looking hoops, though I find a something strangely beautiful in watching, say, Bez Mbeng spend all 48 minutes running pick-and-roll for the Jazz.
This brings us to the exception to this rule: the Sacramento Kings. While fellow tanking teams like the Utah Jazz are adopting the Mbeng Doctrine, no one in Sacramento seems totally aware that the Kings are eliminated from play-in contention. They held a multi-game "lead" for worst record in the NBA one month ago, and they have "slipped" to fifth thanks largely to a quixotic effort to help DeMar DeRozan climb up the NBA's all-time scoring list. In the process, the Kings are showing that, done well, tanking is not the simple, brainless practice many assume it is. It takes a certain degree of organizational alignment—from ownership through management, down to the coaching staff and thereby out onto the court—in order to, respectively: be fine with losing 10 games in a row by playing Bez Mbeng 48 minutes; sign Bez Mbeng to play 48 minutes; have 48 minutes to give Bez Mbeng, without having to invent an obviously fake injury to a disgruntled superstar; and simply roll the ball out there and say Bez, it's time to cook, again, for 48 minutes.
The Kings are not doing any of that, because they are a stupid organization run by penny-pinching owner Vivek Ranadivé, seemingly unaware that, instead of inventing everything from first principles, he can observe more competent NBA organizations (read: any of them) and learn from what they are doing. There is no alignment and no vision. I have enjoyed watching Maxime Raynaud flip-shot his way onto one of the All-Rookie teams and Dylan Cardwell chart new frontiers in the fields of offensive rebounding and offensive fouling, but this is pretty clearly a team that doesn't know how to lose (or to win, or to win by losing). Shutting down Zach LaVine, Keegan Murray, and Domantas Sabonis was a nice start, but nobody involved seemed to think it would take more than that. When competing against well-run organizations like the Jazz or the Indiana Pacers, you have to be ready for something like the Killian Hayes renaissance.
Being annoyed with this requires a certain amount of psychic damage, though after Ranadivé oversaw the speedrun from cool fun team everyone liked to laughingstock in three short years, he deserves no grace. The Kings have been a disaster throughout his nearly 13-year reign, but it feels especially painful this year, as several recent Kings escapees are thriving. De'Aaron Fox is about to win a championship alongside Victor Wembanyama. Ranadivé fired head coach Mike Brown in a fit of pique last year, and Brown's now coaching the New York Knicks, one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference. Neemias Queta (Boston) and Keon Ellis (Cleveland) couldn't get off the bench for the Kings, yet there they are, playing big roles for contenders. Meanwhile, Kings fans are left parsing the finer points of the Daeqwon Plowden experience.
This brings us to Sacramento's most recent game, against the Warriors on Tuesday. In his second game back from runner's knee, Steph Curry came off the bench for Golden State, and though his team is hard-locked into the 10th seed, he was obliging enough to try to win the game. However, it took some doing. These Warriors are tiny men and they were totally unprepared to deal with Cardwell and Precious Achiuwa (who has singlehandedly won the Kings several games they couldn't afford to win), which led to a super-tight game down the stretch. After Achiuwa scored to put the Kings ahead 101-100 with 3:25 left to play, head coach Doug Christie inexplicably called on Doug McDermott to foul Seth Curry, sending him to the line. In the moment, the Kings having done this expressly to give away their lead seemed plausible, if only in the sense that there seemed to be no other sane explanation for it.
Curry went 1-for-2, and then McDermott hit a three to restore Sacramento's lead, but the Warriors were kind enough to end the game on a 9-1 run and win, 110-105. After the game, Draymond Green was asked about tanking, and he ripped the intentional foul on Curry. "I saw a team tonight foul Seth Curry with three minutes to go in a game for no reason," Green said, before suggesting the NBA "fine the hell out of" tanking teams.
Incredibly, this led to an NBA investigation. On Wednesday, ESPN's Shams Charania reported that the NBA was looking into the foul. With the rest of his studio deskmates snickering, Charania reported that Sacramento's explanation was that Christie did not realize his team was in the bonus. In other words, the foul was a product of incompetence, not malice. The next day, the NBA released a statement siding with Christie: The Kings were not being evil, just stupid.
When the Kings end up with the eighth pick in the draft for no reason other than a total lack of organizational competence, they will have deserved it.
