SACRAMENTO — Losing for a dozen years in a row is hard – especially when you never even get to touch the ball.



Just ask Gary Gerould.



The 78-year-old has never taken a shot, made a pass, or played defense for the Sacramento Kings. But the team’s longtime radio man has spent nearly half his life telling the cowbell kingdom what those plays looked like, from the 1985 team that had moved here from Kansas City to this current Kings team (29-26) that looks fully capable of breaking the NBA’s longest playoff drought and is just a half game behind the eighth-place Clippers entering Sunday’s game against Phoenix.



In between, there was one of the great what-if runs in league history, with those wildly entertaining Kings coming so close to winning it all but always thrilling along the way. But it has been nearly 13 years since they were in the postseason, a stretch that began when Tim Duncan’s San Antonio Spurs took out that Ron...