As if the Kings’ 2025-26 NBA season couldn’t get any weirder, one of the team’s key contributors was benched in Thursday’s heartbreaking overtime loss to the Portland Trail Blazers at Moda Center.

Malik Monk received his first DNP-CD (Did Not Play, Coach’s Decision) of his Kings tenure, raising eyebrows in Sacramento and across the league.

After the down-to-the-wire, controversial loss, Kings coach Doug Christie explained why he opted not to play Monk.

“We were going with defense, but it’s a logjam,” Christie said (h/t The Sacramento Bee’s Jason Anderson). “We’ve got a lot of guards, so whenever it was Keon [Ellis] being the odd man out, then it was Keon being out. Tonight, we were playing Keon, so Malik was out.”

Ellis, whose DNP-CDs and inconsistent minutes have perplexed Kings fans and the NBA as a collective, played a season-high 32 minutes off the bench Thursday night, finishing with 10 points on 3-of-9 shooting, with four rebounds, three assists and six steals.

With DeMar DeRozan, Russell Westbrook, Dennis Schröder and Nique Clifford all playing at least 20 minutes, Christie couldn’t find the minutes for Monk, one of Sacramento’s most effective reserve players.

Despite trade rumors involving Monk dating back to this past offseason, Anderson reported, citing a source with knowledge of the situation, that Monk’s benching was not trade-related and rather simply a coaching decision.

Christie and his coaching staff still are searching for the solutions to this guard logjam, but he’ll remain open-minded in the meantime.

“Nothing is permanent,” Christie said. “Obviously, we’re going to continue to try to make it happen, but Keon played well. We’ll give Keon a run and allow him to continue to develop with those guys.

“He came in off the bench, I thought, and played fantastic with that bench unit. They did a really good job in the third quarter. It just kind of got away from us. We got stalled out a little bit, but they came back with the starters and Keon was a part of that group. … I thought those guys did a great job.”

Sacramento fell to 6-21 on the season, tied for the second-worst record in the Western Conference.

“We’re searching,” Christie said. “So far, it has not worked the way we want it to work. Now, I will say obviously we haven’t had our full deck, but the point is we’re continuing to search. We’re continuing to coach. We’re continuing to push.

“We’re not stopping anything that we’re doing to try to find a way to get ourselves, not only wins, but to find the ability to say this is the standard of what we’re going to do.”

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