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Sacramento Kings announce 2023-24 season schedule. Here's … – Capital Public Radio News
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Sacramento Kings guard De’Aaron Fox (5) and teammate Sacramento Kings forward Domantas Sabonis, right, during player introductions before an NBA basketball game against the Phoenix Suns in Sacramento, Calif., Friday, March 24, 2023.
AP Photo/José Luis Villegas
After snapping a 16-year playoff drought last season, the Sacramento Kings are set to make a return to the Golden 1 Center court in October.
The NBA released its 2023-24 season schedule last week, and the Beam Team will start their season on the road, playing against the Utah Jazz on Oct. 25.
Just a few days later on Oct. 27, the Kings will return to the Golden 1 Center to face off against NorCal rivals, the Golden State Warriors, for the first time since they lost last season’s 7-game playoff series.
And the NBA has introduced a twist of their own to this year’s schedule: The league will hold the first iteration of a new in-season tournament meant to drive fan excitement earlier in the season.
The tournament organizes all 30 teams into groups of five. Those five teams will play against one another until a winner is determined — then those winners (and a wildcard team) will go on to compete for the inaugural NBA Cup.
There’s been some changes to the Kings’ roster this season, too. Just a few days ago, the team signed former first round NBA draft pick Skal Labissiere — who was previously with Sacramento between 2016 and 2019. The Kings also signed EuroLeague MVP Sasha Vezenkov and former Indiana Pacers player Chris Duarte earlier this summer.
The Beam Team will also have 22 of their games televised nationally this season, compared to only six last year. And 16 of those 22 games will take place right here in Sacramento at the Golden 1 Center.
CapRadio spoke with FOX40 Sports Reporter Sean Cunningham, who grew up in Sacramento as a Kings fan and has covered the team for years, about what to expect from the team this season.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
They’re being rewarded for the success that they had [last season]. There are people that want to tune in and see an exciting brand of basketball, a team that has shown the ability to compete and shown that they’re a better road team than they are at home.
But more than anything, there’s 22 national TV games, and 16 of them will take place at Golden 1 Center. What that means is that so many people took notice of the atmosphere that’s in Sacramento when the Kings play. It’s a lot like what it used to look like back in the 90s and 2000s when Arco arena was just this crazy loud, rowdy barn of a building that had some of the most passionate fans in the NBA.
Now the building is different, it’s no longer a barn and honestly, it’s probably the best building in the entire league. But it still has those raucous fans who just go out there, root for their team, show that they care and show that civic pride. And now you have a beam every time they win? I think people loved that novelty.
The first thing is it kind of feels a little bit like a “run it back” season for a team who went 16 consecutive losing seasons. Last year they were able to kind of snap that streak and get into the postseason with the exciting style of play that they have, [in part due to] the two all-stars in Domantas Sabonis and De’Aaron Fox — who both ended up on the all-NBA team — and new head coach Mike Brown who led them to 48 wins.
They’re trying to build off of that success and for a team who finished third in the West, the early portion of the season is where they can make a good amount of headway in terms of being able to duplicate that last season or even build upon it.
But this year adds a little bit of a different wrinkle to that because early on in the season, the NBA has added an in-season tournament and it starts Nov. 3 — on Tuesdays and Fridays, the Kings will play games that are in the in-season tournament, that’s new this year.
They’re in a group in the West [for the tournament] … it’s the Kings, the Warriors, the Timberwolves, the Thunder and the Spurs. So five teams are put into a group and each team will play two games at home and two games on the road. They’ll play those games within the first few weeks of the season.
These are still regular season games, but they now count towards an in-season tournament. It kind of follows these in-season tournaments that soccer in the Premier League and other higher lower division soccer clubs would do.
No, it’ll be completely separate. That was something that we had wondered about ourselves, knowing that the NBA for several years had been thinking about this and what it would look like. I think the NBA, to its credit, did a really good job of at least displaying the information for fans and media alike to be able to educate themselves on it in a simple way. But the toughest part about it is none of us have seen it before.
Talking to players both publicly and privately, some of them are a little apprehensive. They don’t really know what to totally expect and how this might affect the season.
But one of the guys that has been really outspoken on it lately is Domantas Sabonis, who’s like, “No, this gives us another chance to win something.” For a team like the Kings, and him being one of the faces of the franchise, you love to hear that because it puts the right spirit, the right kind of approach to what lies ahead. And you want your players to be able to have that mindset of wanting to win and play for something that’s meaningful.
Sasha Rezenkov is probably the player that has fans’ curiosity, media curiosity. [Fans] want to see if he can translate his outstanding brand of basketball to the NBA level. Will he be able to take that step and be able to flourish in the NBA like he has in Europe?
I mean, you’re talking about a guy who’s been a professional since he was a teenager. Now he comes into a Kings team that he can offer a lot to: Shooting, a physical presence and he’s a guy who’s kind of gritty and has some leadership to him and likes to attack the paint. If that can translate, I think Kings fans are going to love him.
The biggest knock on the Kings last year was that they couldn’t stop you or I from scoring. Defense was kind of at the forefront of things that they wanted to address in this off season. And I’m not so sure that they did the best job in going and addressing that, but Chris Duarte is a guy who certainly checks that box. He comes over from Indiana … [he] played with Domantas Sabonis before.
Those are probably the biggest additions the team has made. But they’re betting on continuity. You know, keeping the likes of Harrison Barnes around was a big step for this team.
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