By Joël Pütz | Sports journalist
On complete fire lately, Victor Wembanyama literally took apart Sacramento in his last match. The defeat of the Californians also earned them a very serious clarification from a renowned American journalist.
Clearly, it is not good to face Victor Wembanyama lately. Unstoppable on both sides of the field, the Spurs pivot has been rolling over the competition for several matches and his last performance was particularly worth the detour, since he scored a triple-double against the Kings (34 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists).
The latter, however, resisted well and ultimately only lost by two small points (127-125), but the Frenchman gave real nightmares to Domantas Sabonis, De’Aaron Fox and others. Above all, the setback puts them a little more in trouble as the Californians have had a more than average start to the season, posting only a poor record of 9 wins for 12 defeats (twelfth in the Western Conference).
A journalist loses his temper after the Kings’ defeat
Returning to the playoffs for the first time in years in 2022-23, Sac-Town has since completely lost its status as the league’s darling. The transplant of DeMar DeRozan this summer does not bring satisfactory results and this time again, the post-season should escape Mike Brown’s men. Enough to visibly exceed Kevin O’Connor, the journalist from The Ringer letting go after the final whistle:
The Kings suck. They are always too small. It doesn’t shoot enough. Sabonis has too many limitations as a “star”. The coaching is bad too. It’s time to make changes. Their first-round pick is protected Top 12 this year and protected Top 10 next year. Keeping these picks is in Sacramento’s long-term interest.
I said last year that this was the opportunity or never to blow everything up, because their window of opportunity would quickly close. They didn’t and their window is closed now, in my opinion. So we probably have to trade Fox for a lot of players, fire (Mike) Brown and rebuild with a young and fun team to watch. See the offers for Sabonis too but otherwise, you have to keep him a little longer.
With the 12th offensive rating and the 19th defensive rating in the league, Sacramento is floundering in rather frustrating mediocrity at the moment. For O’Connor, we must end all this as quickly as possible and start from scratch. Otherwise, the franchise could relive a crossing of the desert like the one between 2006 and 2023… A nightmare scenario.
For Kevin O’Connor, the Kings are at the end of the cycle and the defeat against the Spurs only reinforced this observation. The Fox-Sabonis-DeRozan trio shouldn’t take them far, so we might as well put an end to it as soon as possible and start fresh.
