Are the Sacramento Kings on the brink of organizational collapse entering the 2025-26 season?
Last season was rough for Sacramento. The Kings fired their head coach (Mike Brown) in the middle of the season and soon after watched one of their superstars (De’Aaron Fox) join a better situation in San Antonio.
No one knows for sure what the Kings will look like this season, especially with rumors swirling that they might acquire former MVP Russell Westbrook.
Fo what it’s worth, Bleacher Report’s Grant Hughes doesn’t see a good year coming for the Kings organization. He predicted this week that Sacramento will have a disastrous season that could even cause Domantas Sabonis to think about a trade request.
“It was fun while it lasted, but the days of the Sacramento Kings resembling a functional organization are over,” Hughes wrote on Thursday.
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“De’Aaron Fox’s exit was an in-season move, but it followed head coach Mike Brown’s firing and preceded an offseason of troublingly familiar mismanagement. Dennis Schroder was Sacramento’s big free-agent get, and it’s very difficult to be excited by a journeyman point guard whose whole game has been based on speed aging deeper into his 30s.”
“Schroder will start and earn $44 million over three seasons, but the low odds that he lives up to his salary aren’t even the worst part of the bargain,” Hughes continued. “In order to onboard Schroder, the Kings had to flip Jonas Valančiūnas for Dario Sarić. The former was the best backup big Sacramento had seen in years, while the latter hasn’t been a rotation-caliber option for half a decade. The Kings are bleeding talent, run by a retread top executive in Scott Perry and a Domantas Sabonis trade request away from total disaster.”
“All of this feels terrifyingly familiar for a fan base that has endured two decades of chaotic management,” Hughes added. “Kings fans know what’s coming because they’ve been through it before.”
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Sabonis posted 19.1 points, 13.9 rebounds and 6.0 assists last season, numbers he’ll need to replicate (and then some) to delay the sinking of Sacramento’s ship for as long as humanly possible.