NBA History: 5 worst teams in the league over the last decade

#1 Sacramento Kings

Cousins and teammate Omri Casspi were traded to the Pelicans in exchange for three players

Win-Loss Record: 287-517 (35.70%)

Kings fans are probably one of the most loyal yet most deprived fans this past decade.The Kings always looked promising before the season started until 82 games pass and they end up missing the playoffs again.

If the Minnesota Timberwolves have a history of drafting badly, the Sacramento Kings are probably worse at both drafting and developing players. To start off, in 2009, they had the 4th and 23rd picks which they used to draft Tyreke Evans and Omri Casspi. The following year, they drafted Bismack Biyombo at 7th and traded down to 10th to get, guess who? Jimmer Fredette. We all know what happened there.

In 2012, they had the 5th pick and drafted Thomas Robinson. If you don’t know him, then it’s probably the reason why this was a bad move for the Kings. In 2013, they drafted Ben McLemore at 7th when they had a thin frontcourt and had a lot of talented bigs in that year to choose from. In 2014, they drafted Nik Stauskas with their 8th pick—another SG whose ceiling was clearly below Ben’s.

In 2015, they once again had a Top 10 pick and drafted Willie Cauley-Stein at 6th. This was the year where they could’ve gotten guys like Myles Turner, Devin Booker, Justice Winslow, and even Kelly Oubre Jr. The following season, they drafted Marquese Chriss at 8th and traded him to the Suns for Bogdan, which was a surprisingly great move. However, they had Georgios Papagiannis from Phoenix at 13th, a player who was projected by many to be a mid- to late second round pick. He only spent two and a half years in the league.

In 2017, they got Zach Collins at 10th and traded him for three young players when they could’ve gotten Donovan Mitchell, Bam Adebayo, and Jarrett Allen.

It comes as no surprise then that over the past decade, they had only won more than 30 games three times. Yes, other than those seasons, they had 20+ wins out of 82 games.

The Kings recently fired Coach Dave Joerger despite taking the team to 39 wins—the most wins they had since the 2005-06 season. Vlade Divac seemed to have a liking for Luke Walton and hired him three days after he was fired by the Lakers for being... terrible. The coach wasn’t only terrible on the court. Off the court, he was also accused of sexually assaulting trusted reporter for multiple networks, Kelli Tenant.

Currently, the Kings have only won 12 of their first 44 games and are in an eight-game losing streak. Not sure if their 13-year playoff drought will be ending soon.