Another preseason game, another preseason win for the Sacramento Kings, who knocked off the Portland Trail Blazers 107-93 on Monday. Davion Mitchell got the start for Sacramento and was sensational, scoring 20 points and dishing on 4 assists while shooting 7 of 12 from the field and 6 of 9 from three.
https://twitter.com/SacramentoKings/status/1447800552742662145?s=20
Anfernee Simons led the Blazers with 24 points, while Dennis Smith Jr. had 18 points and 7 assists.
Harrison Barnes continued his steady preseason with 16 points, while Terence Davis had 17 points, 3 boards, and 2 steals. De’Aaron Fox played 22 minutes, finishing with 8 points on 2-10 shooting but adding in 5 assists, 4 rebounds, and 3 steals. He did shoot 4-4 from the free throw line, and is now 10-10 from the line in the preseason.
While the first two preseason games featured Luke Walton sticking with his key rotation players for most of the game, he dug deeper into the rotation against Portland. 16 players entered the contest for Sacramento; Chimezie Metu, Jahmi’us Ramsey, and Louis King all got good minutes, while Robert Woodard and Neemias Queta both saw action for the first time in preseason.
Both teams held key players out, as Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield, Tristan Thompson and Marvin Bagley all sat out for the Kings, while Portland were without Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, Norm Powell, Robert Covington, Cody Zeller, Nassir Little, Ben McLemore, and Tony Snell.
The Kings will head home to face the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday in their last preseason contest.
And the Giants hung on to win last night against the Dodgers 1-0!
….so not only is my supervisor a L*kers fan, and a D*dgers fan………he’s from Sacramento.
Davion Mitchell is obviously going to be able to play defense but if he is going to shoot the way he we’ve seen both in Summer League and in the preseason he’s going to be a really nice player.
Yep. He’s been extremely impressive so far. If his shot is even decent, he’s a player, like for real.
Just to get the pulse of folks around here, if Fox, Hali and Mitchell end up being the best players and assets on this team, does Monte feel the need to move one of them to round out the roster elsewhere? Basically does he cash out on excellent guard depth to possibly add excellent wing depth?
I’m not sure, but if not they should make RUN DMT t-shirts or something.
(gotta mix first and last names, tho)
I feel like they have to do that at some point if only to balance the roster because I think they are totally lost if anything happens to Barnes (and they might be anyway because they’re the Kings). We’ll see how this season goes but I still continue to believe that if they move Fox for a real impact wing player it might be best for this team in the long term. It’s not that I don’t like Fox but if both of your guards can shoot at a high level and one of them is a lockdown defender, it just might be easier to construct a team around Haliburton and Mitchell. But we’ll see. I am at least excited that we might actually be able to deal from a position of strength for the first time in… ever.
I don’t think that becomes an issue until at least two years from now when Hali is extension eligible.
The current salaries of Hield and Barnes hopefully can be transitioned to accounting for a max contract player and a couple flyers on athletic, defensively capable wings similar to Louis King.
The season is fast approaching 🙂
I don’t know what to do with my hands!
The Nets are going to sit Kyrie Irving until he gets a vaccine.
Irving for Simmons might be what actually gets done.
I’ve seen so many “how will Brooklyn manage without Kyrie” articles. He’s played in barely half the games since he went to the Nets.
Yeah, and it’s not like they need his scoring or playmaking with Harden and Durant on the court. They could trade him to a Florida or Texas team for legit assets.
No way. Even with all the Simmons drama, at least you can expect him to be eligible to get on the court. Kyrie has no trade value whatsoever. Even if the vaccine thing did get sorted out, he’s demonstrated time and again he’ll find new things to get out of playing up to his contract. No value in a guy who’s gonna be a headache off the court without ever playing on it.
Kyrie is one guy I would believe when he says he’d retire if he was traded. There’s no way Morey can risk trading Simmons for kyrie.
The kid looks sharp! Great highlights, although when there are none of Mitchell playing defense, I almost feel cheated.
There were a few plays where he clawed the ball away and another king picked up the ball on a fast break.
The Kings….look like a playoff team…?
(This will age poorly by the first 9 game losing streak)
I hope for the first playoff game this season they print shirts that say:
playOFF NIGHT
excellent!
Is that cuz the Kings will be watching the postseason from their living rooms for the 16 straight season?
(I know, I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…)
Very nice play on words there!
That’s fantastic.
And we should acknowledge that McNair knows something about how to evaluate talent—certainly better than me and, I believe, most of us.
Yeah if we could continue this win streak into the regular season that would be greeat…
As some twitter folks pointed out…
ever since Shaq left we’ve been winning. Curse b gone.
It’s a shame there’s not a preseason post-season, because I think we have a group of players could make a serious run at a preseason championship.
From what I saw of the first half I was disappointed that the Kings did not do a better job of defending the give-and go. They made Nurkic look like a genius and gave up several uncontested layups—just the sieve-like defense that disgusted me last season.
yes, they got beat on that continuously. and on the PnR.
Mitchell did better when he went under rather than trying to get through the big bodies.
Read some NBA stuff on position less basketball- the new trend. A number of teams are using variations of multiple ball handlers, multiple creators together.
Not sure if this was intentional but the Kings are in that spot now.
Does put pressure of defense.
In last draft, Mitchel, Giddey and S. Barnes are all very versatile
There is a similarity here between the Kings and the Giants- who play unconventional- pull starter after 4 innings and no runs, players playing multiple interchangeable positions and rapid substitutions with relief pitchers. Best players on field ( court) and the right match-up’s.
Some random notes. Although Fox shot poorly, he was very aggressive on defense, getting at least two impressive steals. Louis King picked up where he left off in summer league. Looked good on both sides of the ball. And a Neemias Queta sighting! He looked okay out there in limited minutes. I sort of thought he looked better than Jones and Metu.
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