Everyone and their mother expected the Sacramento Kings to be bad heading into the 2026-27 season. But even the Kings players are throwing their hands up in the air and admitting that they're not a very good team — with Zach LaVine making a casual, yet brutally honest, admission regarding the roster's sad state of affairs.
The Kings fell to 1-7 on the season after suffering a 116-103 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers, and they allowed Luka Doncic, the early favorite to win MVP, to dismantle their defense to the tune of 40 points on 11-of-23 shooting. And LaVine basically admitted to the fact that the Kings have poor defenders on the roster whom the Lakers were able to exploit.
“They’ve got some bad defenders on their team, but so do we, so they exploited them,” LaVine said in his postgame presser, via Brenden Nunes of Sactown 1140.
That is such a loaded remark from LaVine, and the way he says it so casually is quite remarkable. Not only did he put the Lakers' defenders on blast, he also basically called the Kings roster full of some bad defenders.
It would be one thing if LaVine had built a reputation for himself as one of the best defenders in the NBA. But throughout his career, that has never been his strong suit. So for him to call out his team like this is not a very good look.
Perhaps this is a way for LaVine to introspect, as he certainly has a part to play as to why the Kings have one of the worst defenses in the NBA. (They rank 28th in defensive rating this season, allowing 119.4 points per 100 possessions.) But doing so in front of the media just invites more criticism and mockery into a franchise that has already become quite the laughingstock over the past two decades.