Exit Report Sacramento Kings: The Same Old Kings. Again.

22 wins. 60 losses. Tied for last in the Western Conference.

Three years ago, Sacramento lit the beam. 48 wins, the third seed in the West, the end of the longest playoff drought in NBA history. The city was electric. The roster was young. The future looked like it had finally arrived for a franchise that had spent two decades as the league's most reliably disappointing organization.

Since that 48-win season, the Kings have finished ninth in the West each of the following two seasons — with 46 and 40 wins respectively — failing to earn a playoff berth both times. In 2025-26, they did not even come close: a 16-game losing streak from January to February, the longest in franchise history, ended any remaining ambiguity about what kind of season this was.

This is what the Sacramento Kings do. They generate brief, intense moments of hope, then systematically dismantle them through a combination of bad trades, worse contracts, organizational dysfunction from ownership to front office, and a chronic inability to build something that actually lasts. The beam era was real. It was also three years ago, and every decision since has moved the franchise further from its promise rather than closer to it.

The Organization — A Franchise That Refuses to Learn

Let's start with the structure, because that is where every Sacramento story ultimately leads.

Owner Vivek Ranadivé has been running this franchise since 2013. In that time, Sacramento has made the playoffs exactly twice. The roster decisions have ranged from questionable to catastrophic. The front office has been rebuilt multiple times without the underlying culture changing. And the ownership's willingness to intervene in basketball operations — to prioritize relationships over roster construction, optics over strategy — has been the consistent thread running through every failure.

The Kings entered 2025-26 with the 28th-worst defense, 26th-ranked offense, and the third-worst net rating in the league. They had assembled, under the banner of competing, a roster of individually recognizable names that had no coherent defensive identity, no clear stylistic direction, and three ball-dominant guards/wings who were all paid to be primary options simultaneously.

This is not a talent problem. It is a construction problem. And construction problems come from the front office.

New GM Scott Perry was hired last summer. His first offseason produced Russell Westbrook on a veteran minimum — a defensible low-risk move — and retained the core that had already demonstrated it couldn't win. Perry himself acknowledged after the season that rebuilding will be "a long process." That is the most honest thing anyone in the Kings organization has said publicly in three years. It is also, given the contracts on the books, a statement that required no particular courage to make.

The Roster — A Gallery of Expensive Mistakes

The starting point for understanding Sacramento's roster is the contract sheet, because the contracts are the cage the organization has built around itself.

Zach LaVine is owed $47.5 million in 2025-26 and $48.9 million in 2026-27, with a player option. He is one of the most aesthetically gifted players in NBA history — an elite athlete, a high-volume scorer, a dunker of genuine generational quality. He is 31 years old, played 39 games this season, and has appeared in exactly four playoff games in eleven NBA seasons. LaVine offers little in the way of defensive resistance. He was acquired for De'Aaron Fox — a younger, better defender, more proven winner, cheaper contract — in what has quietly become one of the worst trades Sacramento has made in a decade of bad trades.

Domantas Sabonis is owed $42.3 million in 2025-26, $45.5 million in 2026-27, and $48.6 million in 2027-28. He is the one genuinely irreplaceable piece on this roster. At 29, Sabonis is a legitimate All-Star center — a triple-double machine, a high-IQ facilitator, a player capable of making everyone around him better. He played only 19 games this season due to injury, which tells you both how fragile the roster's competitiveness was without him and how dependent Sacramento's entire offensive structure is on a single player.

The problem with Sabonis is not his talent. It is his fit with the modern NBA's defensive requirements. He is still a detriment to fielding a title-caliber defense.
A team built around Sabonis needs perimeter defenders who can cover for his limitations in space. Sacramento has consistently built around him with more offensive players rather than defensive ones — compounding the problem season after season.

DeMar DeRozan, 36, averaged 18.4 points on 49.7% shooting in 77 games. His consistency is real and his professionalism is beyond question. He is also 36 years old, playing at a level that is impressive for his age and insufficient for a team trying to build toward something. His $24.6 million contract this season and $25.7 million next season — not fully guaranteed — at least represent manageable obligations on an otherwise bloated payroll.

The offensive lineup of LaVine and DeRozan sharing the wings was flagged before the season as a warning sign. When LaVine and DeRozan shared the wings together on the Chicago Bulls, they won only 39 games. Sacramento assembled that same pairing and acted surprised when the results looked familiar.

The Coach

Doug Christie was given the full-time job last summer after going 27-24 as interim coach the previous season. He is a Sacramento legend — a beloved former King, a man who genuinely cares about this city and this franchise. He is also a first-time head coach managing a roster with structural problems that no coaching scheme can fix.

Christie's tactical fingerprints are not yet fully formed — this was his first full season with intentional authority over the rotation. What is clear is that the roster he was given made his job nearly impossible from October. The most-used lineup of Schroder, Westbrook, DeRozan, LaVine, and Sabonis had a defensive rating of 122.1 and a net rating of minus-16.8. Five players, all offensive-minded, none of them capable of anchoring a defensive system. The result was predictable and recorded nightly.

Christie deserves a real roster before he can be fairly evaluated. He has not yet had one.

The Players

Domantas Sabonis, when available, was exactly what he has always been — 15.8 points, 11.4 rebounds, 4.1 assists per game in 19 appearances, 54.3% from the field. The production per game is legitimate. The availability — 19 games — is the number that defines his season. Sacramento's record when Sabonis played versus when he didn't tells the entire story of how dependent this team is on a single player.

Zach LaVine, 39 games, 19.2 points, 47.9% from the field, 39% from three. When healthy, the offensive talent is undeniable. The defensive liability is equally undeniable. And 39 games — less than half the season — is the availability record of a player being paid as one of the five highest-compensated guards in the league. That gap between salary and production is the central financial problem Sacramento must solve.

DeMar DeRozan, 77 games, 18.4 points, the team's most consistent presence. At 36, he was the floor of this roster's competitiveness — the player who showed up every night regardless of context. His contract is manageable. His age is not a long-term planning asset.

Keegan Murray, 23 games due to injury, 14.0 points, 5.7 rebounds. The Kings signed Murray to a five-year, $151 million extension — a commitment that reflects genuine belief in his development. At 25, Murray is Sacramento's most important long-term asset. He is a legitimate two-way forward — one of the better defensive forwards in the West when healthy — and the player most likely to still be a cornerstone piece when the rebuild reaches its conclusion. His contract, $11.1M this year rising to $29.9M by 2029-30, is backloaded but structured to reflect a player in his prime years. The Kings need him healthy and central to whatever comes next.

Russell Westbrook, at 37, was Sacramento's assist and steals leader — 6.7 and 1.3 per game in 64 appearances. The statistics are functional. The symbolism is uncomfortable: a 37-year-old veteran on a minimum contract leading a rebuilding team in playmaking. GM Scott Perry singled out Westbrook as the silver lining of the season — a mentor for young players, a professional presence in a chaotic locker room. That is true and appropriate. It is also a sign of how thin the organizational infrastructure around the young players actually is.

Maxime Raynaud, 74 games, 12.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, 57.1% from the field. The undrafted French center was one of the few genuine positive surprises of the season — a young, efficient big who gave Sacramento real production on a minimum deal. At 23, Raynaud is the kind of discovery that smart organizations build around. Sacramento should lock him up immediately.

The Positive Exception — Competing When It Didn't Have To

One note of genuine credit before the diagnosis gets too bleak: Sacramento was one of the few lottery teams that did not go into full tank mode late in the season. The Kings continued to play competitive basketball — or as competitive as this roster is capable of — even after elimination from playoff contention in March.

Sabonis, LaVine, and De'Andre Hunter were sidelined for large portions of the year. ESPN Rather than managing the record toward lottery positioning, Christie played available players and competed. The young players — Raynaud, Clifford, Carter — got real minutes in real game contexts. That is the correct developmental decision even if it cost lottery positioning.

Whether the NBA rewards that integrity in May is a different question. But the Kings at least demonstrated that losing with dignity is possible, even for an organization that has historically struggled with both losing and dignity.

The Two-Phase Plan

The path forward exists, even if it requires more discipline than this organization has historically demonstrated.

Phase One — The LaVine Trade: LaVine has one year left on his contract after this season — his player option for $48.9 million in 2026-27. If he picks it up, Sacramento is paying $48.9 million for a player who has missed significant time in consecutive seasons. The correct move is to find a trade partner early in next season, when LaVine is healthy and his value is at its highest point. The return should prioritize draft picks and young developmental players — not another veteran scorer. A salary dump component is acceptable if it accelerates cap flexibility. The goal is to get out from under the commitment and redirect those resources toward the rebuild.

Combined with a high lottery pick from the 2026 draft — Sacramento enters the lottery in the top six — this creates a foundation: Sabonis, Murray, the lottery pick, with veteran support from Westbrook and DeRozan and Monk as legitimate rotation contributors. Not a playoff team in year one. A team with a direction, a system, and the kind of cohesion that the current roster structurally cannot produce.

Phase Two — The 2027-28 Decision Point: Sabonis enters the final year of his contract in 2027-28 at $48.6 million. Murray is in the middle of his extension at $26 million. Monk is on the books. Those three players combined will consume more than $90 million in a season where Sacramento must decide whether the softer reset worked. If it has — if the lottery pick developed, if Murray is healthy and performing, if the culture changed — the Sabonis contract becomes a tradeable asset for a contending team. If it hasn't, Sacramento can use the cap reset to make aggressive moves in the open market.

This is not an exciting plan. It is a realistic one. And realistic is what Sacramento needs — not another roster of individual names that look good on a press release and play minus-16.8 net rating lineups in November.

The Ownership Question

Every Sacramento plan eventually collides with the same wall: Vivek Ranadivé.

The owner's involvement in roster decisions, his relationship-based approach to personnel, his willingness to override basketball operations for reasons that have nothing to do with winning — these are not rumors. They are the documented history of this franchise. The Kings are the same old Kings again. That pattern does not change with a new GM or a new coach. It changes when ownership either changes or commits, with genuine conviction, to getting out of the way.

Scott Perry needs the authority to make hard decisions — to trade LaVine when his value is high rather than waiting for it to decline, to not re-sign players because they are popular, to build around the lottery pick rather than surrounding it with veterans who limit its development. Whether he has that authority is the most important question Sacramento faces this offseason.

If he does, there is a plausible path forward. If he doesn't, the 2026-27 season will begin exactly like this one — with optimism, recognizable names, and a defensive rating that tells the real story by November.

The Outlook

GM Scott Perry said the rebuild will be "a long process." He is right. The contracts are real. The asset base is thin — Sacramento entered the draft with only one second-round selection. The organizational habits are deep.

But the lottery pick is real. Sabonis is genuinely good. Murray, healthy, is a legitimate two-way foundation. Raynaud is a cheap find. The draft class is deep enough that even a fifth or sixth pick could be meaningful.

The difference between Sacramento and the franchises doing this correctly is not talent. It is discipline. The willingness to make the hard trade rather than the comfortable one. The willingness to build a defensive system rather than a highlights reel. The willingness to accept 35 wins in 2026-27 as progress rather than failure.

Three years ago, the beam was lit. Since then, every decision has pushed it further away. The Kings have one more chance to course-correct before the LaVine contract expires and the window for meaningful reset closes.

Whether the organization is capable of that discipline is the only question that actually matters.