If this is the end of Luke Walton’s Kings career, it’s a fitting one.
The most exciting thing to happen in the Sacramento Kings’ 123-105 loss to the Utah Jazz on Saturday night was that a fan delayed the game for about 15 minutes after presumably drinking too much and throwing up on the Golden 1 Center floor.
The jokes and metaphors write themselves.
Other than that, it was just another Kings loss, their seventh in eight games and it looked pretty similar to just about every other loss during that stretch. The Kings’ might have improved a bit on their effort on Friday from their 108-89 loss to the Toronto Raptors, but the bar was pretty low.
Sacramento kept it somewhat competitive through three quarters, trailing just 84-80 through three quarters, and then got completely dominated in the fourth period, getting outscored 39-25. This has happened more than a handful of times to the Kings this season and is becoming a disturbing trend.
The Jazz rained three-pointers all night and saw strong contributions from just about every player that touched the court.
On Saturday, De’Aaron Fox continued what is at this point an alarmingly bad start to the season, finishing 5 of 17 for just 13 points on the night. Fox also just looks like he’s constantly in a bad mood out there, and given the state of the team, it’s hard to blame him. When your best player playing poorly and is just listless out there, it makes sense that the team would mirror that.
The team just has no real fight or passion at this point in the season and it jumps off the screen. At a certain point, people need to be held accountable.
Fans have speculated in recent days when exactly the Kings will pull the plug on Luke Walton. If this is not the game where they do it I’m not sure what they are waiting on at this point.
Now at 6-11 things are unraveling quickly in Sacramento, and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to stop anytime soon, barring some kind of drastic move.