The Sacramento Kings rallied for a 126-110 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Sunday night, a win that has been very rare this season. But that has hardly put a gloss on what is shaping up to be one of their worst seasons in franchise history. 

Three days earlier, the Kings collected their 50th loss of the season in a 133-123 defeat to the New Orleans Pelicans. With 17 games left, Sacramento might still avoid being the worst in franchise history, as it lost 65 games in 2009. 

However, the bigger question is about what this team could possibly salvage from a collapsing campaign. 

Russell Westbrook sat at the podium after that Pelicans loss, and those questions got on his nerves. The 37-year-old flipped the post-game interview in a nearly seven-minute tirade that’s now gone viral. He said that the media have “a lot of opinions” about what they were doing, called out “false comments” about the team, and stared down reporters who he said are not present in their practice sessions but have narratives about the team. 

It is the boiling point in what has been a terrible season for the Kings. 

They entered the year with modest hopes but instead delivered a franchise-record 16-game losing streak and what many are calling the NBA’s worst club. Westbrook’s addition was supposed to be that added veteran presence, but everything has fallen like a deck of cards. 

Sacramento has stumbled through decades of near-misses, bad drafts, and front-office chaos. Westbrook’s rant just exposed the rot that’s been festering long before he signed that one-year veteran minimum deal last October.

Sacramento’s Two Decades of Heartbreak

The Kings hold the NBA’s longest postseason drought after they went 16 straight seasons without a playoff appearance. They finally broke it in 2023 with a play-in push under first-year coach Mike Brown, giving Sacramento its first postseason berth since 2007. 

Fans dared to dream that their team would have more postseason success, but reality has set in: this may actually be the worst franchise in NBA history.

Under Vivek Ranadive’s ownership for over a decade, nothing has quite fit. 

There have been impulsive moves, coaching carousel spins, and a revolving door of talent that amounts to zero success. No championship to speak of for the franchise since 1951, when they were the Rochester Royals. That’s a 74-year title drought, the longest in the league, and that was even their first and last Finals appearance to date. 

It’s embarrassing, and bringing in Westbrook as the wildcard was only going to get worse because they were not getting the MVP player of years back. Fair enough, after a solid but unspectacular year with the Denver Nuggets, the Kings were the only team to really give him a chance. The nine-time NBA All-Star and 2017 MVP was still chasing rings on his sixth team since leaving the Oklahoma City Thunder, and this is the worst possible place to be when talking about a chance to win titles. 

Walking through the door in Sacramento was essentially Westbrook closing his championship chapter. He is averaging 15.5 points, 5.4 rebounds, and 6.5 assists, better than his numbers in Denver, but again, it is his seventh consecutive season that he is averaging below his career averages. He has been the veteran presence, but hardly any consolation for the fact that it is a bad team, which led to his recent standoff with the media.

Westbrook has a documented history with the media and is hardly shy when letting his voice be heard. 

The narrative has followed him like a shadow; he is explosive on the court, but has zero championships and apparently “poisons” winning cultures in teams. It is easy to pin every team’s failure on the guy who averages triple-doubles but never has enough to push for the Larry O’Brien Trophy. Everywhere he lands, it’s the same. 

The Thunder reaches the Finals, Westbrook’s shot selection takes the fall. The Houston Rockets, with James Harden, have too much iso ball. The Los Angeles Lakers with LeBron James, that one was a chemistry killer. 

The media loves a fall guy, and Westbrook has been one throughout his career.  The Kings executives have been dodging accountability and are letting the narrative focus on one guy’s “attitude” or “fit” instead of structural failures. 

This isn’t the first time it has happened in the NBA, from Allen Iverson to Carmelo Anthony and even Harden at some point.  That “without a ring” narrative will always be tossed first before anything else.