He and Sabonis did have great individual seasons. What I can’t wrap my head around is how we didn’t make the playoffs. I know there’s a counter argument that we had 46 wins, but we can’t discount how diluted the bottom part of the league is (more teams with less than 30 wins than I can ever remember).
You’re not making sense here. This is a false statement.
Only 3 teams in the West won less than 30 games this season. Which actually happens frequently. Most recently it happened in 20-21 and 20-22. The East had 4 teams finish with less than 30 in 20-21 and a staggering 7 teams in 2019-2020. Granted, that season only played 72, 73 games, but still — the West only had 2 teams finish with less than 30 that same season.
The West is just loaded. And has been for a long while, sans an injury plagued season here or there.
The #11 seed in the West just finished .500 at 41-41. The top 10 seeds finished with 46 wins or better.
When there’s that much depth and parity, 46 wins isn’t necessarily a negative. Because pretty much every team in the West can beat any of the others on any given night.
The KINGS 16-14 record against the East is certainly concerning, considering their 30-22 record against the superior and deeper West and especially considering their record against the West’s top seeds. But that can sometimes be misleading due to the travel involved in playing against the East as well as the long road trips. Still, they took too many L’s against the bottom tier teams and that helped do them in wrt to earning an automatic playoff bid.
Circling back to the main point, the bottom of the league was not overly diluted. In fact, from 1-10 it was rather strong, with Houston being an drastically improved 11th team. And I suspect Memphis and San Antonio to be improved 12th and 13th teams next season. The Spurs were already playing very well the last month or so. And Utah is yet another team that could make a jump and complicate things out West.
Honestly, I can easily see a scenario where the KINGS take a step or two forward in terms of being a better, more well-rounded team while still winning only 46-48 games again due to the depth in the West, especially if Memphis rebounds and the likes of HOU, SA, and UTAH all get better.