The Sacramento Kings scored four points in the first quarter Wednesday night at Thomas & Mack Center — the fewest in any quarter in Summer League play, per ESPN’s game recap — and spent the rest of the evening paying for it in an 82-76 loss to the Boston Celtics. Sacramento is now 1-3 in Las Vegas.
Boston’s lead reached 16 behind Hugo Gonzalez, who finished with 24 points and 10 rebounds, and Chris Cenac Jr., who added 10 points and 12 boards off the bench. The Kings chipped at the margin all night and made a real push in the fourth quarter, but a team that gives away nearly a full quarter of offense rarely gets all of it back, and Sacramento didn’t.
The night’s useful development was Alex Karaban. The first-round pick, who lost time to an ankle injury at the California Classic earlier this month, led Sacramento with 21 points and eight rebounds — his best game of the summer by a wide margin. Emanuel Sharp added 12. A four-point quarter is a bad ten minutes of basketball, and it belongs in the record book it just entered; it is also the kind of thing that happens to July rosters and tells you almost nothing about October. Karaban looking like the two-way wing Sacramento drafted, after two quiet weeks, tells you something worth keeping.
For fantasy purposes, nothing here moves Sacramento’s regular-season math. Karaban is a dynasty-only name whose stock steadied Wednesday after a slow summer start, Sharp is a deep-dynasty stash on a three-year deal, and no Kings Summer League performance — good or historically bad — should change how you value the NBA roster in redraft leagues.
