A new basketball season beckons and something bizarre is happening at Golden 1 Center. The Kings believe now is the time to win an NBA championship.
I began to follow the Kings for a living in 1984. They were based in Kansas City. My newspaper sent me to Missouri to see what the fuss was about.
For the next 40 years, I never saw the Kings march into a new season with a win-it-all attitude. Until now.
Never mind those grand ambitions to qualify for the playoffs. The Kings want the ring.
That’s the best explanation I can figure for the offseason acquisition of DeMar DeRozan, an All-Star swingman and one of the league’s best shooters. The Kings plucked DeRozan from the Chicago Bulls in a complex trade involving the San Antonio Spurs.
Like most NBA swaps, the deal has potential and consequences. But that’s not what makes it bizarre.
The Kings gave up forward Harrison Barnes, reserve guard Chris Duarte and three draft picks. No remarkable moves there.
Here’s the part where the Kings detached themselves from logic. With DeRozan on board, the Kings gain a 35-year-old with a $24 million annual salary whose peak is long past.
The DeRozan trade is the sort of move an NBA team makes after it loses a championship. DeRozan the final addition to a near-perfect creation.
The Kings are not that team. They haven’t been competitive among the NBA’s best for a quarter-century. They need multiple pieces, especially on defense.
But that’s not how management apparently sees things. The only explanation for the DeRozan acquisition is the Kings are gunning for the NBA Finals.
DeRozan provides offensive depth and versatility. He joins guard De’Aaron Fox and center Domantas Sabonis for baskets galore, assuming they can share the ball.
The trio should feast on bad and mediocre opponents.
But it’s hard to imagine good teams being overwhelmed by the DeMar, De’Aaron and Domantas combo. The new lineup paints a productive picture, but coherence seems overlooked, along with reliable defenders.
Under coach Mike Brown, the Kings have entered that vague NBA waiting room where teams sit stranded for years, eager to transport themselves into conference and league championships, only to watch someone else grab the invitation.
When I think of the waiting room, I picture the Los Angeles Clippers. Their fate—good but never great—summarizes the frustration that awaits the Kings as they shed the degradation of perennial draft lottery bums.
Last season, the Kings failed to reach the playoffs when they collapsed against the New Orleans Pelicans. Then Oklahoma City swept the Pelicans into oblivion. And Dallas erased the Clippers and Oklahoma City.
Such is life in the waiting room.
Despite his shooting talents, DeRozan is a playoff bust. He led the Toronto Raptors to the Eastern Conference finals of 2016 but lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers. The 2016 run was his magnum opus. Toronto traded him the next year.
But enough about history. Let’s celebrate the Kings for acting like a franchise ready to chase an NBA title.
Local sports fans live in a world of dreams and possibility, always poised for glory, believing management knows its business, makes smart moves and sees treasures others miss. The DeRozan trade inspires a burst of fantasies.
Back in the NBA waiting room, the Clippers have the opposite problem. Clippers fans are conditioned to believe nothing is possible. They have a new $2 billion arena, but no hope of watching the NBA Finals there.
That’s why the Clippers are the perfect team to measure against the Kings. They are brother orphans, both removed from upstate New York (Rochester and Buffalo), grown to maturity in California.
The Clippers have never reached the NBA Finals. Kings last won a title in 1951. If DeRozan, Fox and Sabonis miss the ring this time, there’s always next year. The waiting room has no clock.
R.E. Graswich can be reached at regraswich@icloud.com. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @insidesacramento.
