The Sacramento Kings are not in a great place. And the Chicago Bulls can feel their pain.
It's hard to be anything much above average when your team is built around DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine. Yet it's also difficult to reset and start over when your team is built around DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine.
For a brief moment, the two high-scoring swing men, along with Lonzo Ball, Nikola Vucevic and Alex Caruso, were at the heart of a Bulls team that was the best in the Eastern Conference. But when Ball hurt his knee, things fell apart quickly, and a major flaw became painfully apparent: It's hard to win in the NBA when your two most important players are overpaid and can't (or won't) play defense.
Sacramento Kings discovering the truth about DeRozan and LaVine
As of Nov. 22, the Kings sit 14th in the Western Conference standings. Their 3-13 record is the fourth-worst in the NBA.
When they acquired LaVine at last year's trade deadline, it's safe to say this isn't what they had in mind. To add insult to injury (no pun intended), their best player, Domantas Sabonis, will miss at least the next 3-to-4 weeks after tearing the meniscus in his left knee. But that's the least of their worries.
Sacramento's loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on Nov. 20 was its eighth consecutive defeat. DeRozan played his worst game of the season, barely cracking the 15-minute mark and scoring seven points. He took just three shots.
LaVine hasn't been much better. He scored 16 points combined in losses to the Oklahoma City Thunder and San Antonio Spurs on Nov. 19 and 16, respectively.
DeRozan summed up the team's struggles quite succinctly, via Chris Biderman of The Sacramento Bee: [We're] in a s--tty place."
Like the Bulls, the Kings will struggle to trade DeRozan and LaVine
Unfortunately, Sacramento should plan on getting comfortable in said place, because there aren't many options to crawl out.
DeRozan is playing the worst basketball of his career, is 36 years old and is still owed $25.7 million next season. LaVine's albatross contract will be even more difficult to move; Chicago struggled to trade him for two years, and got lucky when the Kings made a grave error in judgment.
The former UCLA star is on the wrong side of 30, has a long history of knee injuries and has a player option for $48.9 million next season that he'll surely take. Good luck finding a trade partner on that one, let alone receiving anything of value in return.
It's been a running joke that Sacramento created the Bulls West. But the predicament the Kings find themselves in -- that Chicago found itself in for years -- isn't funny. At least not to them.