Zach LaVine scored 37 points on Sunday and the Kings still lost by eleven. That should end any argument about who to blame for this 0-3 start: a guy who drops 37 in a loss isn't the problem. Darius Acuff shooting 9 of 23 is a problem, and De'Andre Hunter holding a rotation spot he hasn't earned is one too. But neither is the real problem, and Sacramento fans know it even while they're yelling at a rookie for forcing shots.
The real problem is this team is 0-3 against a schedule that included a rebuilding Memphis team playing without Ja Morant, and Sacramento has been outscored across all three losses by enough to rank 28th of 30 in net rating. The whole operation, from the bench to the front office, is still broken.
Start with Doug Christie: the record demands it. Last season under Christie, this franchise strung together the longest losing streak in its history and became the first team in the league to clinch a losing record before February ended. They finished 22-60. Now it's a new season, Christie is 0-3 again, and his defense ranks 27th in the league through three games. It's the same coach running the same team into a wall again. A 16-game losing streak and a historic-early guaranteed-loser tag didn't get him fired, so a quiet, ugly 0-3 shouldn't buy him a pass now.
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RatingThen look at who's actually on the floor. Hunter arrived in a trade that sent out Keon Ellis and Dennis Schröder, and nobody in Sacramento's front office seems to have asked the obvious question first: why was a talented wing on his third team when the league generally doesn't give up on talented wings for nothing? He'd already been dealt once before Sacramento took him on, and he's been dealt at the deadline in back-to-back years. That's a pattern, and Sacramento bought in anyway. Add a one-year flyer on Ben Simmons to a roster that already has an aging, oft-traded wing, a rookie being asked to do too much, and a Sabonis who managed a quiet 15 and 15 against Memphis, well below his usual numbers, and you get a roster built by people who keep betting on reclamation projects instead of fixing a defense ranked 27th in the league.
It's early, sure. Three games is three games, and nobody's writing off a season in late October. But "it's early" stopped working as a defense the moment this became the second straight year this coaching staff has watched this kind of collapse happen. A new roster finding chemistry explains most early slumps. This organization keeps making the same personnel bets and getting the same results.
RTGAcuff will figure out when to stop forcing it. Hunter won't figure out effort, because the people who traded for him didn't bother asking why two other franchises already gave up on him. And Doug Christie doesn't get to keep calling this a process when the process has now produced two straight disasters.
