{"id":511702,"date":"2026-01-02T12:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T12:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/511702\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T12:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T12:15:13","slug":"doug-christie-finds-silver-lining-from-loss-to-celtics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/511702\/","title":{"rendered":"Doug Christie finds silver lining from loss to Celtics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sacramento Kings<\/a> may have the bleakest outlook of any team in the NBA; even their peers at the bottom of the standings have slivers of hope to hold on to. Meanwhile, the Kings have a roster that doesn’t make sense<\/a> all while having logjams at nearly every position and having injury problems afflicting a few of their key players. To start off the new calendar year, Sacramento lost once more, suffering their third consecutive defeat in a 120-106 loss to the Boston Celtics.<\/p>\n

Try as the Kings might<\/a>, this roster is simply a hodgepodge that they have to move on from to truly begin their rebuild. Even some of the decisions that head coach Doug Christie has been making have been head-scratching, such as de-prioritizing Keon Ellis and Nique Clifford as well as relegating big-money free-agent signing Dennis Schroder to a bench role.<\/p>\n

But if it’s any consolation, the Kings head coach is recognizing better effort<\/a> from his team as they look towards starting off 2026 on a better note than they did on Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe compete level and the standard that we’re looking for was much, much better,\u201d Christie said, per Brenden Nunes of Sactown Sports 1140.<\/p>\n

There is going to be not much rest for these weary Kings as they face the Phoenix Suns on the road later tonight at 9:00 PM E.T.<\/p>\n

Can Kings get back to their beaming ways?\"KingsSergio Estrada-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

The Kings are in a bit of a transition period at the moment, but it’s clear that eventually, they will have to blow up this roster. They’re going to have to embrace the youth movement at some point and perhaps build around Domantas Sabonis, the star they chose to keep instead of De’Aaron Fox.<\/p>\n

It will be up to the Kings’ ownership, however, if they will permit the team’s need to start over. But for the team’s sake, they will have to do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sacramento Kings may have the bleakest outlook of any team in the NBA; even their peers at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3792],"tags":[7,3215,4056,6,986,477,4055],"class_list":{"0":"post-511702","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento-kings","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-doug-christie","10":"tag-kings","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-sacramento","13":"tag-sacramento-kings","14":"tag-sacramentokings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115825457920389643","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}