With just over 20 games remaining in the 2025-26 season, the Sacramento Kings are firmly in contention for the number one overall pick in the 2026 NBA Draft. Despite winning two of their last 3 games, which nearly qualifies as a winning streak in a difficult season, the Kings still sit firmly at the bottom of the standings with a 14-47 record.
Their place in the standings was harmed, or helped depending on how you look at it, with an incredible 16-game losing streak that spanned more than a calendar month. The Kings lost on January 18th at home to the Portland Trailblazers and didn’t “Light the Beam” over the Golden 1 Center until February 23rd after a comfortable victory against a short-handed Memphis team.
These struggles are being welcomed by Sacramento faithful as they look ahead to the 2026 NBA Draft which many experts consider to be full of elite players. The top five prospects like Kansas’s Darryn Peterson and BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, among others, are being described as generational and many believe that last year’s number one pick Cooper Flagg would be outside the top 5 in this class.
That feels like hyperbole in the wake of Flagg’s impressive rookie season but it says a lot about this class that this is even a discussion. Thanks to the recently flattened lottery odds the Kings have the same odds (14%) for the #1 pick as the next two teams Indiana and Brooklyn and have a 4-game cushion over the 5th ranked that has just a 10.5% chance at that pick.
This has been a difficult season for Sacramento that almost everyone outside of the Kings organization could have predicted but it has been even worse than predicted. A combination of poor injury luck and some suspiciously timed surgeries, the Kings have started a youth movement on the floor while still maintaining some veteran identity.
Russell Westbrook and DeMar DeRozan are still chugging along and climbing all-time NBA leaderboards but youngsters like Maxime Raynaud and Nique Clifford are also getting their time to shine. Others like G-League players Patrick Baldwin Jr and Killian Hayes are auditioning for the Kings and other teams and the team is firmly in long-term evaluation mode.
It may seem like a stretch to say that there is optimism in Sacramento considering their tortured past in the lottery and draft, but there is a sliver of light poking through at the end of the tunnel. Kings fans are hoping that the #1 pick is at the end of that tunnel but there are plenty of consolation prizes in a deep draft class stocked with talent. All the Kings have to do now is keep losing and that dim optimistic light will shine brighter and brighter.
