THE SCENARIO: It is October 2016. The Sacramento Kings are now under new ownership following the dysfunctional tenure of Vivek Ranadive. Former Memphis Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger has been hired as the team’s new Head Coach, while franchise player and two-time All Star DeMarcus Cousins has been traded to the New Orleans Pelicans. The Cousins trade was the final move made by former GM Vlade Divac and signals a full scale rebuild for the Kings. New owner Ryan Lantz has hired Derek Lee as Divac’s replacement, but with a young roster lacking a star and a playoff drought stretching 10 years and counting, can he turn the Kings from the NBA’s laughing stock into a respectable franchise once again?
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1 October 2016
With the start of the new season only a few weeks away, I meet the owner to go over our goals for this season. Clearly we’re in rebuilding mode so our main goal is to develop our young guys and compete every night.
The owner has targeted 19 home wins at our new arena but with the severe lack of talent on this roster I’d be pretty happy if we manage 19 wins all season. He also wants the attendance in the new arena to rank in the top 10 by the end of the regular season. This could prove difficult, but hopefully the fans can see that we’re building for the future and will support the team despite all the losses.
Speaking of building for the future, the owner wants two lottery picks in the upcoming draft. The Chicago Bulls will obtain our first rounder if it falls outside the Top 10 so we’ll need to look at trading for at least one lottery pick, if not two. Those trades could include Arron Afflalo or Anthony Tolliver. Both players were signed as free agents by Divac but it’s clear the owner isn’t a fan and wants at least one of them gone.
Our final goal is to try to have a top-15 roster by the start of next season, which is basically impossible as we currently have the third-worst roster in the league. The younger players aren’t going to improve that quickly and Sacramento isn’t a market that will attract top tier free agents. If we’re going to improve significantly we’ll need to do it via trades and the draft.
Sacramento Kings Roster
(*) indicates new player
PG: Darren Collison, Langston Galloway*, Ty Lawson*
SG: Arron Afflalo*, Buddy Hield*, Ben McLemore, Malachi Richardson*, Garrett Temple*
SF: Tyreke Evans*, Rudy Gay
PF: Anthony Tolliver*
C: Willie Cauley-Stein, Kosta Koufos, Skal Labissiere*, Georgios Papagiannis*
Gay is now our best player following the departure of Cousins and that also makes him our most valuable trade asset. A contending team looking to add some scoring punch might be interested in him, so hopefully I’ll be able to trade him for a first round pick and/or young players. Between Afflalo and Tolliver, the former is the more likely to be traded in order to free up minutes for no. 6 pick Hield, whom we acquired as part of the Cousins trade. McLemore hasn’t really shown much progress since the team drafted him in 2013 and is another possible trade chip.
Our season will tip off on October 26th with a visit to Phoenix to take on the Suns. The following night we host the Spurs in the first ever game at the Golden 1 Center, before welcoming the Timberwolves two days later. We then travel east for a Halloween night match up with the Hawks in Atlanta.
26 October 2016
Sacramento Kings vs Phoenix Suns
The Suns are in a similar situation to us, with quite a few young players and no realistic hopes of playoff basketball this season. With that in mind, our opening game is a good opportunity for both teams to get that first win of the season on the board, as we don’t know how long we’ll have to wait for the next one.
The Suns lead for most of the game although we do well to stay within touching distance. Heading into the 4th, we trail by eight points before going on a run to draw level with under a minute on the clock. Rudy Gay drains an 18 foot jumper to give us a 113-111 lead with 4.3 seconds remaining and Buddy Hield then forces Eric Bledsoe into a bad shot as time expires to give us the W.
27 October 2016
San Antonio Spurs vs Sacramento Kings
The Spurs have the honour of being the first visitors to the Golden 1 Centre. As usual they’ll be aiming for the championship this season so we’ll have our work cut out tonight.
The gameplan for this one is to play a quick tempo and try and score as many points as possible in transition. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work too well because the Spurs have 16 offensive rebounds. Although we’re only down by 10 after three quarters, we run out of gas in the 4th and end up losing 132-113. We’ll have a better shot at getting our first home win against Minnesota in the next game.
29 October 2016
Minnesota Timberwolves vs Sacramento Kings
The Timberwolves are another young team and are the only team in the NBA with a longer postseason drought than us. However they do have two former Rookie of The Year award winners in Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns and our gameplan on defense is to try and contain Towns in the paint.
Just like in the last game, our poor rebounding kills us as we let three Minnesota players, including Towns, grab at least 12 boards. He also scores 23 points and the Timberwolves use a strong third quarter to run away with the win, 109-94.
31 October 2016
Sacramento Kings vs Atlanta Hawks
We fly out to Atlanta for the start of a five game Eastern Conference road trip. The Hawks no longer have Jeff Teague, Kyle Korver, and Al Horford but Paul Millsap is still there. They’ve also added Atlanta native Dwight Howard to the roster in the offseason. We’ll need to be wary of that frontcourt combination and try to protect the paint better than we did in our last game.
Our rebounding is much better this time with Gay and Cauley-Stein combining for 27 boards to match Howard and Millsap. The game is close throughout and when Gay levels the score at 94-94 with under two seconds remaining, it looks like we’re going to OT. Unfortunately, Millsap has other ideas and hits a bank shot at the buzzer to break our hearts. The defeat stings but we don’t have time to feel sorry for ourselves as we head to Miami to take on the Heat tomorrow.
Screenshots from NBA 2K17 by 2K Sports
