It was Feb. 15, 2017 and the Kings had just lost by 23 points to the Golden State Warriors in Oakland.
Still, there was a strange amount of optimism in the locker room. Sacramento was 1 1/2 games out of the eighth spot in the Western Conference and had won five of its previous seven contests.
“We decided to put on the board that we had 25 games left, and we said we needed to 3-2 in each five-game span and we’d be all right,” recalled Kings guard Garrett Temple, “and then the trade happened. We definitely had high hopes.