The 2025-26 Sacramento Kings in a nutshell

Investigated for tanking, found to be incompetent. Put it on the tombstone.

Good morning. Be careful hugging Italians this weekend, especially if you are also Italian. Let's basketball.

The Sacramento Kings have had an abysmal, sickening season. The Beam Team was just three years ago! Sigh. Well, time to close it off on a high note.

NEW YORK – The NBA issued the following statement today regarding the Sacramento Kings investigation.

“The NBA has completed an investigation of the Sacramento Kings and Head Coach Doug Christie’s decision to foul intentionally late in the team’s game against the Golden State Warriors on April 7.  The league’s investigation determined that Christie mistakenly believed that the Warriors were not in the penalty and therefore instructed his team to foul in an attempt to stop the clock and utilize one of the team’s remaining timeouts.  The investigation found that Christie made no intentional effort to give the Warriors a shooting foul, or to cause the Kings to lose the game.”

That's right, the super weird foul that Doug Christie told Doug McDermott to commit with three minutes left in a 1-point game on Tuesday – a foul that Draymond Green brought up as an apparent tanking attempt in his post-game comments – was investigated by the NBA. And the NBA determined that it wasn't an attempt to tank the game and nominally increase Sacramento's odds of a high draft pick. It was just incompetence.

Christie's explanation of the mistake – given to the media before the NBA cleared the Kings – actually makes perfect sense: he wanted to use his timeout before he lost it at the 3-minute mark, wrongly assumed he would wait a possession when his team got the ball with 3:49 remaining, wrongly believed his team was not in the penalty (the team had committed their fourth foul one minute earlier), wrongly told McDermott to foul a career 86% shooter. Christie clearly was not trying to tank here, and the Kings have almost entirely avoided the acute tanking activities this season. As the Kings themselves pointed out anonymous through media coverage of this incident, Sacramento has actually been winning games of late, much to the chagrin of fans.

So, cool: Christie was not trying to tank when he sent Seth Curry to the line with an intentional foul up one with three minutes left. The NBA confirms it. Innocent.

Innocent of intentional tanking. Guilty of total incompetence.