The Sacramento Kings just can’t catch a break or maybe, depending on how you look at it, they keep catching all the wrong ones.
De’Andre Hunter, the Kings forward acquired in a three-team trade just weeks ago, underwent season-ending left eye surgery Friday afternoon at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Roseville, California. The procedure, performed by Dr. M. Ali Khan, addressed a retinal detachment Hunter suffered on Feb. 6 during a game against the LA Clippers. The team confirmed Hunter is expected to make a full recovery, with an update anticipated in approximately eight weeks.
The good news is that Hunter, 28, should be back and healthy well before next season. The bad news is that Sacramento traded for him, he played two games, and now he’s done for the year joining a growing list of Kings players who won’t suit up again in 2024-25.
A trade that immediately unraveled
Hunter arrived in Sacramento as part of a three-team deal involving the Cleveland Cavaliers and Chicago Bulls. The Kings sent guards Dennis Schroder and Keon Ellis to Cleveland; Hunter came to Sacramento from the Cavaliers; and Chicago received two second-round picks along with Kings big man Dario Saric. It was the kind of deadline move designed to add a proven wing scorer and inject some veteran stability into a struggling roster.
Instead, Hunter appeared in just two games for his new team, averaging 7.5 points and 1.5 rebounds while shooting 21% from the floor. He had already been dealing with left eye iritis before the retinal detachment diagnosis arrived, and now the Kings are left with a player they gave up real pieces to acquire unavailable for the rest of the season before he ever had a chance to settle in.
The Kings’ injury pile keeps growing
Hunter is the third Sacramento player to undergo season-ending surgery in a matter of days. Domantas Sabonis is out after left knee meniscus repair surgery. Zach LaVine is done following a procedure to address a tendon issue in his right fifth finger. Now Hunter. Three significant players, three season-ending surgeries, all within the same brutal stretch of the calendar.
For a franchise that entered the season with genuine aspirations of returning to the playoffs, the injury timeline has been nothing short of catastrophic. Sacramento currently sits at 12-45, the worst record in the entire NBA a standing that carries its own complicated implications.
Where the tanking conversation enters the picture
Sacramento’s situation lands in the middle of one of the league’s most pressing ongoing debates. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been vocal about the tanking problem this season, describing it as worse than anything seen in recent memory and meeting with all 30 general managers to discuss potential rule changes. The Kings’ injuries are genuine nobody is suggesting otherwise but the optics of a 12-45 team losing three key players to season-ending surgery while lottery positioning becomes increasingly valuable is the kind of thing that keeps league officials up at night.
If Sacramento finishes with the worst record in the NBA, the Kings would carry a 14% chance of landing the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 draft a class widely considered to be exceptionally deep with high-end talent. That lottery slot won’t fix everything, but in a rebuild that has gone sideways in a hurry, a franchise-altering prospect at the top of the draft is exactly the kind of reset button an organization needs.
What it means for Hunter specifically
Lost in the broader team narrative is the personal dimension of what Hunter is dealing with. A retinal detachment is a serious medical situation, and the fact that he’s expected to make a full recovery is genuinely the most important detail in this story. Eye injuries carry a different weight than a sprained ankle or a sore hamstring the stakes are higher, the timeline is more delicate, and the mental challenge of navigating that kind of recovery is real.
Hunter will have eight weeks before the team provides a formal update, and the expectation is that he’ll be ready to go when Sacramento opens training camp next fall. Whether the Kings surrounding him will look meaningfully different by then through the draft, free agency, or further roster moves is the bigger question hanging over the franchise.
For now, Sacramento is simply trying to get through the season intact, one day at a time.
