Sacramento Kings Rattle Off Fourth Straight Win, Off to Best Start in Years
Following a 107-99 win over the Orlando Magic on Tuesday, the Sacramento Kings are off to one of their best starts in the past decade.
It’s been a long, hard decade-plus for the Sacramento Kings. They’ve seen a ridiculous amount of turnover on the coaching staff, turmoil in the front offices, trades of stars, and no playoff berths for 12 straight season.
The 2018-2019 Kings, though, are off to a great start to this season. In head coach Dave Joerger’s third season, Sacramento lost their first two games and three of their first four, but they’ve rattled off four consecutive wins.
The streak began last Wednesday, when Sacramento erased an eight-point halftime deficit against the Memphis Grizzlies to win by five. They followed that up with another late comeback on Friday, outscoring the Washington Wizards by 10 in the fourth quarter to win by four. On Monday, they beat the Heat in Miami for the second straight season, the first time they’ve done that in franchise history. Their fourth straight win finished off a Florida sweep as they knocked off the Orlando Magic.
Before this stretch, the Kings hadn’t owned a winning record since they started the 2016-2017 season 2-1. They hadn’t been two games over .500 since November 28th, 2014 when they were 9-7. The last time Sacramento started a season with five wins in the first eight games since the 2014-2015 season, and it’s just the second time since 2006-2007.
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The Kings have played comeback kids during this four-game stretch. They’ve been excellent coming out of the locker room, outscoring their opponents by 29 points in the third quarter, and 38 points in the second half in their past four games.
Their defense has also improved. Opponents shot 51.4 percent against the Kings in the first four games, but that has dropped down to 41.3 percent during this current streak.
Sacramento has gotten great contributions from their young players. Third-year guard Buddy Hield is continuing to develop into a great scorer. Through his first eight games, Hield is averaging a team-high 18.9 points per game and shooting 52.2 percent from floor, including hitting on 44.7 percent of his three-point attempts. Tuesday was his best effort so far, scoring a season-high 25 points on 9-of-15 shooting and grabbing 11 rebounds for his first double-double of the year.
After a promising rookie season, 2017 fifth-overall pick De’Aaron Fox is scoring 17.5 points per game, second on the team, and leads the squad with 6.9 assists per game, good for 14th in the NBA. This year’s second overall pick Marvin Bagley III is off to a strong start, scoring 12.4 points and grabbing 7.1 rebounds. He’s also made some highlight reels blocks.
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Fourth-year center Willie Cauley-Stein has become one of the veterans of this group, and is building off a personal best season last year. After set career-highs with 12.8 points and seven rebounds in 2017-2018, Cauley-Steain is off to an excellent start as well. He’s at 17.4 points and nine rebounds, and has grabbed point-rebound double-doubles in each of the Kings’ last four wins.
They’ve also gotten surprisingly excellent contributions from Nemanja Bjelica, a free agent signing this past offseason. He’s scoring 15.1 points per game, over eight points higher than his previous career-best. Bjelica is shooting 57.6 percent from the floor, an 11.5 percent jump from last season, and 53.6 percent from beyond the arc, a 12 percent jump from last year.
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It’s still extremely early in the season, obviously, but this is a very promising start for a team that has missed the playoffs for 12 straight seasons.