The Sacramento Kings are fighting for their playoff lives in a Western Conference play-in race that is getting closer by the day, but they aren’t showing much fight.
The Kings couldn’t even summon enough effort and intensity to beat the injury depleted and woeful Washington Wizards on Wednesday at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
The Kings deployed a lineup of Keon Ellis, Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, Keegan Murray and Domantas Sabonis with Malik Monk, Jonas Valanciunas, Trey Lyles and Markelle Fultz coming off the bench. That group should have made easy work of the Wizards. Instead, the Wizards handed the Kings a humiliating 116-111 loss that will loom large during a summer of change if Sacramento fails to make the play-in tournament.
“You have to play at a certain intensity level, and there is nothing else,” interim Kings coach Doug Christie said. “You have to play at that level against teams that are at the bottom of the league or at the top of this league, period.”
The Wizards came in with 16 wins and five of their top seven scorers — Malcolm Brogdon, Bilal Coulibaly, Corey Kispert, Khris Middleton and Marcus Smart — out due to injuries. They had Jordan Poole and Alex Sarr, their two leading scorers, but they didn’t even play in the fourth quarter with Washington choosing to play AJ Johnson, 20, Bub Carrington, 19, JT Thor, 22, Anthony Gill, 32, and Tristian Vukcevic, 22.
Poole scored 23 points in 24 minutes for the Wizards (17-59), who had lost three in a row and eight of their last nine. Carrington and Johnson scored 19 points apiece. Vukcevic had 17 points and seven rebounds.
DeRozan put up 29 points, seven rebounds and eight assists for the Kings (36-40), who are 10th in the West and clinging to the final play-in spot in the West. Sacramento now trails the No. 9 Dallas Mavericks by 1 ½ games with a tenuous one-game lead over the No. 11 Phoenix Suns.
Sabonis posted 18 points, 16 rebounds and seven assists. Murray and LaVine also scored 18 points. Monk came off the bench to score 13 points in 35 minutes, going 4 of 13 from the field and 2 of 9 from 3-point range.
DeRozan scored 20 points in the fourth quarter as the Kings came back from a 14-point deficit to get within two with 55.6 seconds to go. Thor, who was called up from the G League earlier in the day, plunged a 3-point dagger into the heart of the Kings when he made his only shot of the night with 40 seconds remaining.
The Wizards outscored the Kings 51-30 from the 3-point line, going 17 of 40 while Sacramento went 10 of 39. The Kings are last in the NBA in 3-point percentage defense at 38.6%. They have been even worse while losing seven of eight and 11 of 14, allowing opponents to shoot 43.7% dating back to March 9.
The Wizards went into the game ranked 29th in 3-point shooting at 31.5%, but they shot 39.5% against a Kings team that can’t seem to stop anybody from lighting them up from long distance.
The Kings will have another chance to stop their downward spiral when they visit the Charlotte Hornets (19-57) on Friday in the fourth game of a six-game road trip. They should win that game, but the same was true against the Wizards.
“The intensity, the effort and the enthusiasm has to be at a higher level,” Christie said. “I’m not questioning whether they will come and play against teams that they know are really, really high level. They’re going to do that. It’s where you think you are just going to coast through a game, and that’s a respect that you put on your opponent, but it’s also a business side that you have and it’s a business approach. It does not matter who we play against. This is how we play, and I have not been able to stamp that the way I want to stamp it because that’s what I’m about.
“I’m not about ever disrespecting my opponent or coming out with any type of effort that is ... (not) superior to the other team’s effort. Now, whether you make shots or a lot of other things, that comes and goes, but when it comes to effort and coming out and smacking people, that’s what we do.”
The Kings went 10-2 in their first 12 games under Christie, but they haven’t been the same since trading De’Aaron Fox to the San Antonio Spurs in a three-team trade that brought LaVine to Sacramento. They nearly pulled off an upset in a 111-109 loss to the Indiana Pacers on Monday after posting impressive back-to-back wins over the Memphis Grizzlies and Cleveland Cavaliers March 17 and 19, but they have lost 11 of 13 dating back to March 9.
“You compete against Indiana for 40 minutes and you let up for eight minutes, OK. That’s a really good team and that happens,” Christie said. “But you come in here against a team that is toward the bottom of the league, they have guys sitting out, and your intensity is not there from the start. You have to look at yourself in the mirror. Me as well.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
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Jason Anderson is The Sacramento Bee’s Kings beat writer. He is a Sacramento native and a graduate of Fresno State, where he studied journalism and college basketball under the late Jerry Tarkanian.