The NBA Draft Lottery is filled with a collection of what-ifs for the Sacramento Kings. As for luck in the lottery, it’s been rare.
The Kings have been in the lottery every year except one since 2007 and have only moved up from their position twice — in 2018 and 2022. Keegan Murray was the fourth pick in 2022. He hasn’t become the star the team and fans hoped he’d be, but he’s at least a rotation player in the NBA.
Don’t even mention 2018 in Sacramento. The Kings drafted Marvin Bagley III second ahead of Luka Dončić, who was selected third by the Atlanta Hawks and then traded to the Dallas Mavericks. It was a move that kept Sacramento mired in losing.
What happened on Monday was like a cruel prank played on the franchise.
The odds were against the Kings having a pick in the lottery this year. They needed to be in the top 12 to keep their pick, or it would go to the Atlanta Hawks from their summer 2022 deal that landed Kevin Huerter, who slumped after a good first season and was traded to thee Chicago Bulls this past February.
Sacramento had only a 3.8 percent chance of moving into the top four and a 0.8 percent chance of picking first during Monday’s lottery. Neither happened.
Dallas, which finished 10th place in the Western Conference and a game behind the Kings in the standings, won the lottery. Dallas, which blew out the Kings in Sacramento in a Play-In Tournament game, had a 1.8 percent chance of getting the No. 1 pick.
The Mavericks are now in position to add Cooper Flagg to a team that already has Anthony Davis and will have Kyrie Irving returning from an ACL injury at some point next season.
Making it worse, one of the only lottery picks the Kings have gotten right in nearly 20 years — De’Aaron Fox — was traded to San Antonio in February. The Spurs, who did not give up this year’s draft pick in the deal, just saw their team get better. Fox already is teammates with the last two Rookie of the Year award recipients, Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle, and he soon will be joined by the No. 2 pick in the upcoming draft.
We all knew that the Sacramento Kings probably wouldn’t have a draft pick when we woke up this morning.
This is arguably worst case scenario for the Kings. The team who they traded De’Aaron Fox to has the 2nd pick, and the Dallas Mavericks get the top pick with 1 less win.
— Matt George (@MattGeorgeSAC) May 12, 2025
That doesn’t even include Sacramento’s 2020 lottery pick, Tyrese Haliburton, being on the verge of reaching the Eastern Conference finals again with the Indiana Pacers. Even Davion Mitchell, a 2021 Kings lottery pick, helped the Miami Heat make the playoffs.
A little bit of luck would have gone a long way in Sacramento, which didn’t bank on being in this position a couple of years ago. The Kings were the darlings of the NBA in 2023 after ending a 16-year playoff drought and finishing third in the Western Conference before losing in the first round to the Golden State Warriors in seven games.
Monte McNair, the 2023 NBA Executive of the Year, and Mike Brown, the 2023 Coach of the Year, are both gone. New general manager Scott Perry and coach Doug Christie are in their place after Christie had the interim tag removed following this season.
Kings fans are a resilient bunch. They’ve stuck by the team during multiple relocation scares and an impressive list of future Hall of Famers passed on in the lottery.
It started in 2009 with Tyreke Evans over Stephen Curry. Evans won Rookie of the Year, but he never became a star. Sacramento passed on Klay Thompson and Kawhi Leonard in 2011 for Jimmer Fredette. The Kings passed on Damian Lillard in 2012 in favor of Thomas Robinson. They drafted Ben McLemore in 2013 only to see Giannis Antetokounmpo selected eight picks later.
Devin Booker would have made sense in 2015, but the Kings drafted a center, Willie Cauley-Stein, to go with their All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins. And they failed to build around Cousins, eventually trading him in 2017 after making him the fifth pick in 2010.
Haliburton became an All-Star with the Pacers, but that seemed fine given the Kings got an All-Star in Domantas Sabonis in a 2022 trade. Sabonis is still with the Kings, but Sacramento is in transition — again.
Christie is beloved in Sacramento. He was part of the city’s best basketball with coach Rick Adelman, leading the program to multiple winning records as a player and within a game of the NBA Finals in 2002.
But it’s harder to lean on nostalgia as nights like Monday have piled up for nearly two decades. It was another evening of bad luck, which has become the norm for Sacramento in the lottery.
(Photo: Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images)