With Portland’s win over the 76ers yesterday, the Sacramento Kings were eliminated from playoff contention for the 14th consecutive season. With the leadership’s poor direction and the lack of high-caliber talent, the Kings’ playoff drought has the opportunity to continue its streak in years to come.
Since the start of their playoff drought, the Kings have gone through 2 owners, 3 general managers, 10 head coaches, and a plethora of players.
With bleak hope and our heads hung in disappointment, let’s take a look back to the glory days and what life was like the last time the Kings made the postseason.
The year was 2006 and the Kings had traded Peja Stojakovic to Indiana for Ron Artest. In Rick Adelman’s last year at the helm, he led the Kings to a 44-38 record, good enough for the eighth seed in the Western Conference.
Their postseason stint would be brief as they faced the Spurs in the first round. Although the Kings managed to tie the series at two games a piece with some help from last second Kevin Martin heroics, the Spurs won the next two games, eliminating Sacramento from the playoffs.
Below is a list of indicators as to what life was like back in 2006:
• George W. Bush was president
• The Seattle SuperSonics were an NBA team
• Twitter was created
• Zinedine Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi during the World Cup
• JJ Redick was the Naismith Men’s College Player of the Year
• The Motorola RAZR was the most popular handset
• Marvin Bagley was seven years old
• Luke Walton was in his third season in the NBA
• People were blasting Beyoncé’s newest hit, Irreplaceable, on their iPod Nanos
•Crash won the Academy Award for best picture
• Microsoft launched Zune
• Taylor Hicks won the fifth season of American Idol
•High School Musical aired on Disney Channel for the first time
• Pluto was downgraded from a planet to a dwarf planet
• The Wii launched
•30 Rock premiered
• Jim and Pam shared their first kiss in the episode Casino Night
• Daniel Powter’s Bad Day was the number one hit
The world of 2006 was a different place and a better one for Sacramento Kings fans. But little did they know that the next 14 years and counting would be the epitome of living in basketball hell.
With Sacramento’s future appearing less hopeful than we Kings fans would like to admit, nostalgia for 2006 and years prior is the only remedy Kings fans have and need to escape the dreadful reality we currently live in.
