For fans who love professional sports, losing and struggling with the teams they love and support may feel more frustrated than athletes. These dilemmas include, but are not limited to: losing the series to grab the big seven, missing the final championship, or missing the playoffs for a long time.
Among the four major sports leagues in the United States, the current "longest playoffs" team is the Sacramento Kings, and for 17 consecutive years, the Kings and their fans have not felt the playoff atmosphere, which has become the goal for which the team has worked hard and struggled for many years.
But last July, after watching a Kings summer league game at the Chase Center in San Francisco, a Kings fan named Sean Chu shouted a slogan ahead of time, saying that his team's playoff "dry period" would end this season. As he walked out of the arena, Sean Chu even gave very specific target numbers: "We're going to get 40 wins." ”
After Sean Chu's video was posted on social networks, it immediately received a large number of mocking voices. After all, the king has been the object of ridicule in the west for the past ten years. Last season, they were just 30-52. With the personnel structure not being much adjusted and no superstars being introduced, there aren't too many people with much confidence in such a team except diehard Kings fans.
But on March 9, with the Kings defeating visiting Knicks 122-117 to win their seventh game in eight games, their win count this season had reached 39, just one step away from Chu's prediction of 40. It was also around this time that the video from last summer became a hot topic again. It's just that nowadays, people have less ridicule for Sean Chu and the king, and more have turned into appreciation and admiration.
In the first few years of the 21st century, the Kings once attracted the attention and love of many fans with their gorgeous playing style and good results, including today's Internet celebrity Sean Chu, it was at that time that he began to like the Kings, and his earliest memory of this team came from 2002, when he was only 6 years old, under the leadership of his father, he began to watch the Western Conference Finals of the Kings and Lakers. To this day, he remembers his father's disappointment after the king lost the Seventh Battle.
But if you don't experience the disappointment of falling to the bottom, you won't have such a deep feeling for the joy of returning to the top. This is also why Sean Chu, who accompanied the team along the way, is so excited. "We beat the Warriors and won the championship in the summer league, and to be honest, it made us happy," Chu said, "We've had a tough time in recent years, so we need to have fun and show after the game that it's a very crucial game." ”
Although Kings fans can maintain this "self-amusement" mentality, the bitterness behind it may only be experienced by themselves. Over the past 10 years, the Kings have only had one chance to celebrate more than 33 regular-season wins, not to mention celebrating the playoffs. That's why Sean Chu was so excited when they won the Summer League. Like he said himself, Kings fans need reasons to be happy. After all, there have been too few such reasons in the past 17 years.
Now, Kings fans can start expecting more joy. The team last won more than 40 games in the regular season, back in 2005-06, when they finished 44-38 and entered the playoffs as eighth in the West, only to be eliminated by the Spurs in the first round. Seventeen years later, with 16 games left before the end of the regular season, the Kings finally increased their winning tally to 40 after beating the Suns.
This change of the king was not for nothing, but a superposition of several elements. This includes the coaching of the team by new head coach Mike Brown, as well as the explosion of energy accumulated by the players after years of dormancy. In the eyes of Kings core Diaron Fox, he really felt the exact point when the Kings had a chance to do something big this season, which came on March 3, local time. On that day, the Kings battled the Los Angeles Clippers and won a narrow 128-127 victory. Fox said after the game that the tough win made him understand that Kings' rise this season was no accident.
"We definitely want to turn that into every year, and we want to be a team that can compete for championships," Fox said, "and we're feeling good this season, but making the playoffs is never our ultimate goal." Mike [Brown] came to our team and he's been coaching championship teams in the past, so he also has big goals beyond the playoffs. It's a big deal for our city, for this team, because we've been away from the playoffs for so long, but even so, we want to achieve more and bigger. ”
The extent to which a professional sports team can inspire a city is immeasurable. In turn, the players felt the energy and support from the city and the fans. "In the past, after the All-Star Weekend, the mentality of the teams and players was, hurry up and finish the game," Kings center Sabonis said, "and if you're ranked low, even in the playoffs, it won't make you feel a lot of fun." Now, a lot of teams are looking up to us, and the atmosphere is definitely different. I can tell you that as the playoffs approach, every game is getting more intense these days. As a competitive player, this is your greatest desire for every game. ”
Although he hasn't played a playoff game for 17 consecutive years, the Kings are ready for it. After beating the Knicks to win his 39th regular-season game, Fox said in a post-game interview: "After we get into the playoffs, every game will be like this. ”
The Kings' guards no longer use the "hypothetical" tone, although from a mathematical and probabilities perspective, they are not really locked in a playoff spot at the moment, and there is still a possibility that they will be squeezed out of the playoff map. But the king was already scrappy. The Nuggets, who ranked first in the West, are a little difficult to catch up, but the Grizzlies, who have the same results as them, have encountered a lot of problems in the past period, and teams such as the Suns, Clippers and Warriors behind them also have their own troubles. So for the king, "protecting three and competing for two" was a very tangible goal.
"The arrival of Mike [Brown] and the words he said to us before the start of the season gave us a lot of confidence," Fox said, "and he will make you believe that you are better than we are at the moment and it will make us step on the court every night expecting a win." We know we can't win every game, but you expect that when you play. ”
For a team like the Kings, which has been mired in defeat for a long time and holds the current record for the longest consecutive playoff misses, restoring their confidence may be more difficult than improving their results, but it is also more critical. And this happens to be what Mike Brown is good at, which can also be clearly perceived from the Kings' improvement and changes this season.
Now, it's only a matter of time before the Kings return to the playoffs. And the confidence and experience accumulated in the regular season will undoubtedly make them look forward to the playoffs that they still yearn for. As the leader and arrow figure of the current Kings, Fox also has more hope in his body.
"Fox has all the qualities you need to be a two-way defender, and those qualities will make him an elite player in the league," Brown said, "and the best of the best." He himself may not have realized it by now, but he has shown a decent ability to switch on the pitch. Especially in the fourth quarter of the game, when we needed him to contribute on both ends of the offensive and defensive ends, he would switch freely. I've worked with a lot of great players, and considering I haven't been with Fox for a long time, I'm a little hesitant to evaluate him, but he really has the ability to move up to elite level. ”
Whether Fox and the Kings really reach this level is the best test for them in the upcoming playoffs.