The Sacramento Kings have to feel pretty fortunate about their schedule for next season. Let's take a look at it in bullet points.
- No road trip of death to start the season off! A week in Northern California, then a quick Midwest stop to Minnesota, Chicago, Memphis, then no extensive road trip until mid-December.
- A pretty low number of back-to-backs, only fifteen in all. That's pretty good and should bode well for a young team still trying to get seasoned legs in the league.
- Five nationally televised games is low, but there's some upside if the Kings make a surprising run. If they don't...five games on TV, and no one has to watch their failures!
- March (a hard eight game homestand) and April (all Western Conference foes, all completely playoff-caliber) suck, so Sacramento will probably have to be well above .500 to have a prayer of making the playoffs, particularly in the West.
- An NBA lockout will probably be happening, so my half-baked analysis in the previous two paragraphs is as useful as a roller-skating panda bear.
It figures for Sacramento fans. This is probably the best-looking schedule for the Kings in the last half-decade, particularly in a critical year for the franchise's future, and an NBA lockout threatens to derail all of it. Time to place your bets on a lockout happening, because there's no way we could ever get lucky in these circumstances.
For more on the Kings, head to Sactown Royalty.