Almost two decades they’ve been waiting for this. The Sacramento Kings return to the NBA playoffs, the North American basketball league, on Saturday April 15 (2:30 a.m., Sunday, Paris time). Facing them, the Golden State Warriors of Stephen Curry, in search of a fifth coronation in less than ten years.
“Coming back to the playoffs after seventeen years and facing the defending champion is the icing on the cake”, summarizes Florian, French fan of the Kings, who made the trip to northern California for the occasion. His enthusiasm and that of a whole city get along, because the Californian capital has come a long way. From far away. “The goal was to change the franchise”related the Kings star Domantas Sabonis to ESPNat the end of the regular season. It was, above all, to reconnect with an interrupted story.
“In the early 2000s, they had an extraordinary career”recalls Jacques Monclar, who today comments on the meetings on BeIN Sports. Thrill team of the new millennium, the Kings multiply the performances but do not win any title. After eight appearances in a row at the finals, the series came to an end in 2006. Fans then hoped that it would not last.
A closed, relegation-free league, the NBA is designed to prevent a team from ever spending too much time in the depths of the standings – which would hurt the league’s competitiveness. Thanks to the “draft” system, the worst teams pick up the most promising players each season. For sixteen seasons – the longest streak of an American basketball franchise – the Kings failed to take advantage of this redistributive system. “It’s a bit like PSG in the Champions Leaguepicture the French fan Florian. We tell ourselves that we will change things for next year. And the following year, we say to ourselves that it will be for next year… It’s a loop that we thought was infinite. »
An “accumulation of nonsense”
This lean period is the result of“an accumulation of nonsense”summarizes former coach Jacques Monclar: “Bad draft choices, failures, instability in management, players who did what they wanted, who lived on the image of the past… It was a hassle. » To the point of erasing, in 2022, the Los Angeles Clippers’ “record” of fifteen seasons in a row without seeing the playoffs.
The tide ended up turning, following a transfer that had yet broken the hearts of some of the Sacramento supporters. In February 2022, the Kings trade the young Tyrese Haliburton (22), presented as the future face of the franchise, against the Lithuanian interior Domantas Sabonis. “Emotionally, it’s been very hard on the fans.describes Olivier, who co-manages the site and Kings France Twitter account. Tyrese Haliburton was very endearing. He kept repeating his love for the city, for the fans, and he was traded without further ado. It seemed unfair at the time, but sportingly it was the right choice. » It was even the turning point in the history of the Kings. “Sabonis is a bit of the handyman of the teamcomments George Eddy, who comments on the NBA for Canal + Africa. He’s a great passer, the best rebounder in the league and he’s close to scoring twenty points per game. »
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