The Kings built their team around the very thing that is now destroying their season

The Sacramento Kings built a 19-point lead over the Detroit Pistons on Thursday. They were ahead by 13 at the beginning of the fourth quarter. That lead remained at double digits with less than four minutes to go. It takes a special collapse to blow a game like that. We are, unfortunately, talking about the Kings.

Sacramento led by three in what should have been the game’s final possession. The Kings could have fouled the Pistons on the catch, ensuring two free throws and preventing the Pistons from taking a game-tying 3-pointer. The debate between “foul” and “allow the 3-pointer” is nuanced and situational. The correct answer is never “both.” That’s what the Kings surrendered. They allowed Jaden Ivey to get up a 3-pointer. He made it, and was fouled in the process. He sank the free throw. The Kings used their last timeout challenging the foul, and could therefore not get a reasonable look to try to to win the game after Detroit took the 114-113 lead. They lost a heartbreaker.

For most teams, this would be the worst loss of the season. For the Kings? It’s Thursday. Sacramento has a positive net rating on the season at plus-1.6, meaning they are outscoring their opponents on the season. Yet through 31 games, they are just 13-18. Why? Because they’ve now lost a league-leading 13 clutch games, defined by the NBA as games in which the score was within five points with five minutes or fewer remaining. In games decided by five points or less, they are 3-10.

Now, under normal circumstances, this would just be bad luck. Clutch records and stats tend to be inherently random because of how small the samples are. All it takes are a couple of good shots missing or bad ones going in and a team’s clutch record can swing wildly. A very small group of stars, most notably Chris Paul, allow their teams to win somewhat consistently in the clutch, but for the most part, it’s among the more random elements of NBA performance. The catch here is that the Kings didn’t build for clutch performance to be random. No, the entire theory of this team was based on winning games in the clutch.

After all, the Kings didn’t necessarily need another high-scoring guard. With De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk and Kevin Huerter in the backcourt along with Domantas Sabonis at center, Sacramento’s strength was already offense. Yet their big offseason move was the acquisition of DeMar DeRozan, a poor defender and 3-point shooter whose primary virtue is shot-creation within the arc. That trait is most valuable late in games.

DeRozan was the Clutch Player of the Year runner-up last season, and he finished third in 2023. The 2023 winner of the award was Fox, as he led the Kings back to the playoffs for the first time since 2006 thanks in large part to an impressive 25-19 record in clutch games. Any team built around Fox, DeRozan and Sabonis was always going to be deficient defensively. It was always going to struggle to take enough 3-pointers, as none of them have a track record of shooting particularly well from deep. But if they could just keep games close, Fox and DeRozan would be such an overwhelming late-game duo that they could eke out enough wins late to make the playoffs.

That’s not happening so far this season. At 13-18, the Kings now sit in 12th place in the Western Conference. They’re on the hook for a three-year deal for the 35-year-old DeRozan when thus far, it seems as though he’s not fitting. Fox has been the subject of trade rumors this season after he declined a summer contract extension. We can’t necessarily call this rock bottom for the Kings. After all, they’ve made the playoffs once in the past 18 seasons. But this is just about as badly as this season could have gone for a team that was desperate to build upon a 2023 playoff berth that now appears unsustainable.