Sacramento Kings: A potential path to the playoffs has been set

The Sacramento Kings appear to have a path set for a possible playoff run.

The Sacramento Kings have a shot — and that’s all fans really could have asked for once the NBA’s postponement started back in March.

There has been a lot of speculation about how the league would ultimately handle resuming play. Some proposals had all 30 teams resuming their regular-season schedules while others simply had the current 16 playoff teams beginning the postseason.

But in the end, it appears as though the NBA is set to go with a more neutral decision.

ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported on Wednesday that the NBA’s board of governors intends to approve a 22-team format where the team will restart its games in Orlando, Florida. The Kings are one of those teams.

The 22 teams will each play an eight-game schedule that could include a possible play-in tournament if necessary. Those teams will consist of the 16 current playoff teams, Sacramento, New Orleans, Portland, San Antonio, Sacramento, Phoenix, and Washington.

A play-in tournament will be played if the ninth seed finishes within four games of the eighth seed. If that’s the case, the No. 9 seed will then enter a single-elimination tournament while the No. 8 seed will require double elimination.

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Essentially, things could get really messy, but also really exciting.

At the moment, the Kings sit 3.5 games back of the Memphis Grizzlies tied with both the Portland Trail Blazers and New Orleans Pelicans. If they were to match Memphis’ record over the upcoming eight-game stretch then they would essentially qualify for a play-in game.

Training is set to resume in July with full training camps beginning in Orlando later in the month. The official return of the season would obviously come soon after.

While this is technically unofficial, Wojnarowski did indicate that this proposal is all but guaranteed to pass at this point. Which means that we’ll be seeing at least eight more games of meaningful Kings basketball.

The Sacramento Kings will have an opportunity to end the longest postseason drought in the NBA.

And for a Sacramento team that hasn’t made the postseason in 13 seasons — the longest such drought in the NBA today — this is a chance to break the streak in a relatively favorable fashion.

The Kings could feasibly finish four games back of the eighth seed and still have a shot at making the postseason so long as they then perform well in the play-in tournament.

This is a prime opportunity for the Kings to take advantage of and it will be interesting to see if the team folds of shines when the season does resume.

But at least for now, they have a shot. And a pretty darn good one at that.