Dennis Schroder is the key piece of change this offseason for the Sacramento Kings as he steps into the role of starting point guard. Schroder is fresh off a summer EuroBasket championship and MVP with the Germany national team. Could adopting the same style of play as his Germany squad be the ticket to better on-court performance in Sacramento?
Germany relied on pace and pushed the ball on offense and applied constant defensive pressure. Schroder put it this way about Germany’s style of play: “Our style of basketball is just unique. How we play. How fast we play. Defensive stops of course. We go out and run. Shoot a lot of threes. Crash the boards.”
Taking that further, Schroder’s teammate Franz Wagner said Germany focused on keeping games out of the half-court on offense as an objective.
This style of play reminded me of a recent episode of the Kings Herald Show podcast in which Jerry Reynolds shared how he would try to make things work with the current Kings roster: “You’ve got too many guards but that is where your talent is, so play a style that allows them to get on the floor. In other words—94 feet, offense and defense, play it.”
Schroder built a reputation when he came into the league as a pesky defender who would pick up defense 94 feet.
Further, Reynolds shared how since the Beam Team year of 2022-23 when the Kings were all about pushing pace and putting pressure on the defense even after made baskets, Sacramento has turned into “almost a half-court team without a half-court offense.”
“When you are playing faster like that, often you get better shots, better quality of three-point shots and that helps your percentage. I thought the team last year really just didn’t, they took a lot of tough shots. They basically worked hard to take tough shots, which never made a lot of sense to me,” Jerry said.
On Monday at media day, head coach Doug Christie emphasized defense first and called out specifically picking up 94 feet. Also at media day, Schroder responded to a question about what makes the Kings a good fit for him in Christie’s offense with this:
“I think just playing with pace, defensively picking up 94 feet, bringing intensity on that end, kind of that dog mentality. Offensively, playing with pace, sharing the ball, move the defense side to side and I think that is how we played with the [Germany] national team, and we had a lot of success that way and I hope that we can come together as a team doing the same things,” Schroder said.
Germany used pace in the EuroBasket to beat Luka Doncic’s Slovenia team. Should the Kings buy into a high-pace offense and picking up 94 feet on defense they could utilize a 10-man rotation to offset the demand that type of play requires, which Christie mentioned on Monday.
The key to all of this is going to be buy in from a group of vets not entirely known for defense with a first-year head coach, and it could also require some rotation flux. But if they can defend and push the pace like Jerry suggested, and the early talk from media day indicates, maybe they collect a few more wins than most think.
Some players are shrewd, but only one is Schroder.
good one, haha
It isn’t going to happen. Christie’s comments about playing 9-10 players and pressuring teams the full 94 feet are laughable, really.
Pitino was the last coach that I can recall doing it back in the 1980s. Players can’t withstand the physical intensity over an 82-game season.
And, of course, there are too many players on this roster who won’t do it or will pretend to do it. And nothing will happen to them because Christie doesn’t have the authority to reduce their minutes.
I was really sad when I saw the first post about Christie’s comments after coming back from a vacation yesterday. I read them as an admission that the team is really terrible, a team so bad that the coach has to talk about playing a defense that no one else in the league would seriously consider.
Surely, Christie knows this? And, if he does, why would he say it?
They have the guards to pick-up full court regularly. Dennis, Keon, Nique, and Devin can be rotated in and out to keep them fresh. It sounded like LaVine, DDR, and Domas will be having the ball in their hands more frequently, so I can see the vision that Doug is throwing out there. I don’t have confidence that it will happen often, or even be a decently effective strategy.
I agree, tough to do at NBA level. Easier with college & HS aged players. Not to mention the older team we have. We do have some solid guys on D, Keeg, Keon, Nique & Carter so hopefully we can get some more energy, effort & improvement at least. I just wish Nique was like 6’8″, close to Keegan’s size. The bench could be awesome with a smaller 5 man rotation of Raynaud, Clifford, Keon, Monk & Carter. It’s a fairly young group, with lots of speed. energy & defensive ability sans Malik.
The main X factors are if bigger mins players like Derozan, LaVine & Malik can step up the defense to a satisfactory level. If the team can’t realistic do ’94 ft for 48 mins, they can still have more consistency with effort & pressure on most possessions which could lead to a big improvement on that end of the floor.
I don’t really care if you’re in your early thirties, if you are on an NBA roster, I’m going to assume that you are more physically fit than 95% of high school and college players.
What is this?
….25 or 30 years where on Media Day our Coach said we were going to emphasize Defense? Has it been 25 or 30 years where it hasn’t happened?
DDR is a very solid citizen and future HoFer, but this really sounds like his style of play “They basically worked hard to take tough shots, which never made a lot of sense to me”.
On the lighter and more positive side:
LOL
That’s hilarious. Hopefully this team developed some good chemistry through the shared shitshow last year.
Badge Legend