Jan 5, 2025; San Francisco, California, USA; Sacramento Kings majority owner Vivek Ranadive after the game against the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center. Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

Kings Owner Blames Injuries for Disastrous Season

Originally posted on Sacramento Kings on SI
By Logan Struck | Last updated Mar 22, 2026 3:55 PM ET

The Sacramento Kings have had a disastrous 2025-26 campaign, to say the least, but what is the main cause? Of course, it is easy to blame poor roster construction, as the Kings managed to put together a group of players who cannot succeed together.

However, Kings owner Vivek Ranadive is putting the blame on the team's injury misfortune. The Kings will go the entire season without seeing their expected starting lineup fully healthy, but he says that is just "a fact of life," in a recent interview with Diya TV.

"Obviously, it’s tough to lose, but injuries are a fact of life. I don’t think we’ve had a single game where we’ve had all our starters together. So we’ve had the injury plague this year," Ranadive said when asked how he handles the ups and downs of the sport.

Are injuries the problem?

Of course, nobody can deny that injuries have played a role in Sacramento's failed season. Domantas Sabonis has played 19 games, Keegan Murray has played 23, and Zach LaVine has played 39. Sacramento's expected opening day starting lineup of Dennis Schroder, Zach LaVine, DeMar DeRozan, Keegan Murray, and Domantas Sabonis never played a minute together.

In fact, Murray and Sabonis never even shared the floor this season. The Kings could not catch a break in the injury department, and Ranadive has a reason to be upset about their poor injury luck.

However, placing blame on injuries when there were many other issues is questionable. Even if they were fully healthy, and of course, this is just speculation, they might have been closer to 30 wins than their current 18. The bigger issue was poor roster construction, which set up Doug Christie for failure, although the first-year head coach did not do himself any favors with such poor performances on both sides of the ball.

Sergio Estrada-Imagn Images

With offseason decisions to retain their core group of Sabonis, DeRozan, and LaVine, while their biggest move was signing Schroder to a surprisingly expensive three-year deal, made it clear that their 2025-26 campaign was doomed before it even began.

Sure, it would have been interesting to see what this group could have done without injuries, but it is irresponsible to say that their health is the sole reason for such a poor season.

Ranadive has an opportunity to actually help fix the Kings this offseason, which starts by letting new general manager Scott Perry do his job. Perry was hired to rebuild this franchise, so giving him a few years to get things back on track is the only way for the Kings to actually turn things around.

This article first appeared on Sacramento Kings on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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