Compared to the New Orleans Pelicans, the Sacramento Kings are a model organization.
Everything that can go wrong has gone wrong for the Pelicans this season.
With injuries plaguing the team and both Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram currently out for the foreseeable future, there are few reasons to pack the Smoothie King Center.
With everything there is to do, see and eat in the Big Easy, you can’t expect a team that owns the second-worst record in the NBA — behind the Washington Wizards — to be a big draw.
And the Kings’ broadcasting crew of Mark Jones and Kayte Christensen acknowledged as much.
Kings announcers didn’t know they were on air and started talking about how the Pelicans arena is empty asl 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/zfgTSuz0vm
— KingCharge (@KingCharge) December 13, 2024
The only problem? They had no idea they were still on-air when they made the comment.
Christensen, a longtime Kings color analyst for NBC Sports California, said something in relation to “This many people makes that much noise.”
For all intents and purposes, the Smoothie King Center was empty, so it’s not hard to decipher what she and her partner were referring to, even if the comments inadvertently made their way through the broadcast.
“They should just invite everyone down from the upper balcony,” said Jones.
Jones is widely respected in the broadcast world and known for his college football work. He and Roddy Jones ranked No. 17 in Awful Announcing’s 2024 college football announcer rankings, as voted on by AA’s readers.
If anything, the Pelicans’ empty arena shows that in New Orleans, it takes more than CJ McCollum and Dejounte Murray to fill the seats.
For a 5-21 team, the sound of a packed crowd feels like a distant dream — and even the Kings’ broadcast team couldn’t help but notice.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.