{"id":135167,"date":"2025-04-18T17:04:32","date_gmt":"2025-04-18T21:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=135167"},"modified":"2025-04-18T17:04:32","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T21:04:32","slug":"kings-demar-derozan-uncertain-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/18\/kings-demar-derozan-uncertain-future\/","title":{"rendered":"6x All-Star&#8217;s Future with Kings Clouded in Uncertainty"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The mid-season coaching change, swapping out Mike Brown for Doug Christie, didn&#8217;t pan out like the\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/18\/kings-need-focus-chris-paul-offseason\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Sacramento Kings<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0had hoped. That&#8217;s not to say that Christie didn&#8217;t do enough to extend his stay as the team&#8217;s head coach. It <em>does<\/em> say that under Brown, the Kings had made the playoffs in two consecutive years leading up to this one. Now, without Brown, they&#8217;re not participants.\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/17\/kings-have-doug-christie-decision-on-their-hands\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Christie may become a good coach, and<\/span> <span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">it may still wind up being in Sacramento<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">. As for the players, the uncertainty is the same, especially for someone like\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/derozde01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">DeMar DeRozan<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">, whose future with the Kings could be in question.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>6x All-Star&#8217;s Future with Kings Clouded in Uncertainty<\/h2>\n<h3>DeMar DeRozan&#8217;s future with Sacramento Kings up in the air<\/h3>\n<p>For a player of DeRozan&#8217;s stature, skill, and talent, he sure has traveled a lot in his NBA career. Since beginning the first portion of his career with the Toronto Raptors, he&#8217;s since moved from the San Antonio Spurs to the Chicago Bulls and now Sacramento. However, his stay in Sacramento might not be an extended one. The Bulls traded DeRozan to the Kings last summer. In his first season, the 6x All-Star recorded 22.2 points, 4.4 assists, and 3.9 rebounds per game, shooting 47% from the field. This season was considered a down year for DeRozan as far as statistics are concerned. That said, there&#8217;s no doubt that he is still one of the league&#8217;s, if not <em>still<\/em> the best, mid-range shooters around, and a significant offensive contributor and pure scorer.<\/p>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Unfortunately, his numbers and impact weren&#8217;t enough to get the Kings over the hump. Of course, the departure of\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/f\/foxde01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">De&#8217;Aaron Fox<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">\u00a0to the Spurs didn&#8217;t help matters. DeRozan was brought in to be that third star alongside Fox and\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/s\/sabondo01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Domantas Sabonis<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">. Now that Sacramento&#8217;s season is over, DeRozan&#8217;s future is clouded. Equally, so is Sabonis&#8217;s.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Uncertain feelings<\/h3>\n<p><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">With the recent firing of now ex-Kings GM Monte McNair and\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/04\/17\/kings-hire-scott-perry-to-solve-leadership-crisis\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">Scott Perry taking over in the role<\/span><\/a><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">, it&#8217;s only another factor building on the uncertainty DeRozan admits to feeling.\u00a0<\/span><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/sports\/nba\/sacramento-kings\/article304491396.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">According to Jason Anderson of\u00a0<\/span><\/a><em><a class=\"editor-rtfLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sacbee.com\/sports\/nba\/sacramento-kings\/article304491396.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">The Sacramento Bee<\/span><\/a><\/em><span data-preserver-spaces=\"true\">, DeRozan isn&#8217;t sure what the future holds for him when asked about the current state of the Kings organization.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cJust the structure and a foundation of a compete level,\u201d <\/em>DeRozan said<em>. \u201cI think all year we had such an uncertainty of everything. You can\u2019t really operate in any successful environment if you have so much uncertainty, so I think for me, just the uncertainty of what it\u2019s going to be going forward.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Another factor in play here is if DeRozan&#8217;s time with the Kings is already over after one campaign, he will play for a fifth team next season. How DeRozan feels about that is uncertain\u2014a common theme in the background of it all. Trading away Fox complicated things, there&#8217;s no doubt. For DeRozan, as great a player as he is, he isn&#8217;t a number one option. He alone can&#8217;t lead Sacramento on deep playoff runs. He may want to look for greener pastures elsewhere again. So, the future is undeniably murky for the Kings <em>and<\/em> for DeRozan.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Darren Yamashita-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The mid-season coaching change, swapping out Mike Brown for Doug Christie, didn&#8217;t pan out like the\u00a0Sacramento Kings\u00a0had hoped. That&#8217;s not to say that Christie didn&#8217;t do enough to extend his stay as the team&#8217;s head coach. It does say that under Brown, the Kings had made the playoffs in two consecutive years leading up to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5081,"featured_media":135174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29,1608,62],"tags":[664,350,1102],"class_list":["post-135167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kings","category-basketball","category-nba","tag-deaaron-fox","tag-demar-derozan","tag-domantas-sabonis"],"modified_by":"Aaron J Zacharias","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135188,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135167\/revisions\/135188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}