The Kings built their team around what is now destroying their season.

The Sacramento Kings built a 19-point lead over the Detroit Pistons on Thursday. They were ahead by 13 at the start of the fourth quarter. That lead remained at double digits with less than four minutes remaining. It takes a special collapse to ruin a game like that. Unfortunately we are talking about the Kings.

Sacramento led by three on what should have been the final possession of the game. The Kings could have fouled the Pistons on the catch, securing two free throws and preventing the Pistons from hitting a game-tying three-pointer. The debate between “foul” and “allowing the triple” is nuanced and situational. The correct answer is never “both.” At that point the Kings gave up. They allowed Jaden Ivey to hit a three-pointer. He made it and received a foul in the process. He made the free throw. The Kings used their final timeout challenging the foul and thus were unable to get a reasonable chance to try to win the game after Detroit took a 114-113 lead. They lost a heartthrob.

For most teams, this would be the worst loss of the season. For the Kings? It’s Thursday. Sacramento has a positive net rating on the season of +1.6, meaning they are outperforming their opponents on the season. However, in 31 games, they are only 13-18. Because? Because now they have lost 13 decisive, league-leading games, defined by the NBA as games in which the score was within five points with five minutes or less left. In games decided by five points or less, they are 3-10.

Now, under normal circumstances, this would simply be bad luck. Clutch records and statistics tend to be inherently random because of how small the samples are. All it takes is a couple of good missed or bad shots and a team’s decisive record can swing wildly. A very small group of stars, notably Chris Paul, allow their teams to win fairly consistently in tough situations, but for the most part, it’s one of the more random elements of NBA performance. The problem here is that the Kings didn’t build for clutch performance to be random. No, the whole theory of this team was based on winning games at the decisive moment.

After all, the Kings didn’t necessarily need another high-scoring point guard. With De’Aaron Fox, Malik Monk and Kevin Huerter in the backcourt along with Domantas Sabonis in center, Sacramento’s strength was already its offense. However, their big off-season move was the acquisition of DeMar DeRozan, a poor defender and 3-point shooter whose main strength is creating shots inside the arc. That trait is most valuable late in games.

DeRozan was runner-up for Clutch Player of the Year last season and finished third in 2023. The winner of the award in 2023 was Fox, as he led the Kings back to the playoffs for the first time since 2006 thanks in large part to an impressive record 25-19 in decisive games. Any team built around Fox, DeRozan and Sabonis was always going to be poor defensively. It was always going to be difficult to make enough 3-pointers, as neither of them have a history of shooting particularly well from deep. But if they could keep the games close, Fox and DeRozan would be such an overwhelming duo late in the game that they could pick up enough wins late to make the playoffs.

That’s not happening so far this season. At 13-18, the Kings now sit in 12th place in the Western Conference. They’re on the hook for a three-year deal for DeRozan, 35, when so far it doesn’t seem like a fit. Fox has been subject to trade rumors this season after turning down a summer contract extension. We can’t necessarily call this bottom for the Kings. After all, they have made the playoffs once in the last 18 seasons. But this is the worst this season could have been for a team that was desperate to build a 2023 playoff spot that now looks unsustainable.