2025-26 Officially Goes Down as Kings’ Most Frustrating Season Yet

The Sacramento Kings came into yesterday, like every lottery team in the league, hoping for a stroke of luck. Instead, it was the opposite. They fell to the seventh pick in the upcoming NBA draft, which feels like a complete failure after an extremely disappointing 22-win season.

Following the conclusion of the season, I looked at the Kings' year and ranked it among the other disappointing results over the last two decades for the franchise. But at that time, the draft lottery results were still unknown. I narrowly decided it was the 2023-24 season, aka the follow-up to the Beam Team season. Instead of building on the previous season's success,

After last night, the conversation is officially over. The 2025-26 season officially stands alone as the most frustrating Kings season in recent memory.

Low Expectations, Lower Results

It's not that the Kings came into the year with high expectations. There were murmurs of playoff goals and aspirations within the organization following what was regarded as a very successful training camp. But the Kings came out flatter than a week-old soda, and just like that, the season was over.

From there, the Kings began their slow descent into the very bottom of the standings, where they stayed throughout much of the season. It led many to believe that they would end up in that bottom position in the draft lottery, guaranteeing a top-vie pick at worst. Instead, the Kings finished the season 8-10 and climbed into a tie with the Utah Jazz for the fourth-worst record in the league.

Sacramento went on to lose the coin flip, and now the Jazz are picking second, and the Kings, seventh.

It's a different kind of feeling in Sacramento. No one is surprised, as this has been the trend for the Kings for as long as everyone can remember. They never lean into the tank, and it came back to bite them even more this season.

The Lost Season

Even before the season started, the 2025-26 season felt like a lost one with the mismatch of expensive veterans on the team. The hope was that it would at least be worth it as the Kings bring in their next superstar with a top pick.

That's still possible, as a perennial All-Star can be found with the seventh pick in the draft, but it's infinitely harder to find someone in that slot than one of the top three picks.

The three rookies in Nique Clifford, Maxime Raynaud, and Dylan Cardwell all impressed, but the Kings didn't showcase a young star to build around, lending the 'lost' feeling even stronger at the tail end of the season. Keegan Murray was supposed to break out in an expanded offensive role, but played just 23 games. De'Andre Hunter got hurt almost the minute he landed in Sacramento. The list goes on and on.

When you add everything together between when Scott Perry took over as general manager and now, there's just an overwhelming feeling of despair among the fanbase. If that doesn't cement the 2025-26 season as the most frustrating season yet, I don't know what does.

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