Sacramento Kings basketball returned today after months off due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Kings faced the Miami Heat today in the first of three scrimmage games the team will play before the season officially resumes.
The game felt like a preseason match from opening tip-off. There were multiple miscommunications on both ends, open shooters on defense and lack of off-ball movement on offense among other things.
As the game progressed, the Kings got promising minutes from DaQuan Jeffries and the fourth quarter saw rookies Kyle Guy and Justin James get playing time.
You can’t take too much away from the first scrimmage game in four months while missing four key players, but let’s go into what we saw from today.
First Quarter:
Miami led 21-8 with three minutes to go. All of Miami’s points came off open three point looks with Duncan Robinson on fire.
Kent Bazemore brought much-needed intensity on defense and made some deflections. Bazemore would also hit the Kings first three of the game.
Corey Brewer made his return to the court getting minutes at the four with Bjelica as the five. Brewer knocked down a corner three on his first attempt.
Defensive coverage improved towards the end of the quarter, which allowed the Kings to cut into the lead to only trail 27-21.
Second Quarter:
DaQuan Jeffries threw down a big one-handed lob on pass from Yogi Ferrell. On the next play, Jeffries got open in the right corner for a three.
The Kings went to a 2-3 zone on defense to make it harder for Miami to find openings and it was working.
Buddy Hield still struggled with the simple passes. He needs to pass it stronger rather than having lazy releases. Hield couldn’t buy a bucket either until a minute left in the second quarter when he drilled a three.
Harry Giles saw two high post opportunities and he attempted a shot on one of them when nobody moved off-ball. It went in-and-out but that’s something we need to see more of from him.
Miami extended their lead to 49-36 again. The Kings allowed easy points in the paint and couldn’t get any good looks of their own.
Sacramento trailed 56-44 at halftime, with Jeffries and Bjelica leading the way with seven points each. Without De’Aaron Fox, Harrison Barnes, Alex Len and Richaun Holmes, that first half could’ve been much worse.
Third Quarter:
The Kings stepped out of bounds too often. They’re going to need to have better court awareness moving forward as they adjust to the wide sidelines.
Bazemore continued to look good, finding his spots on offense and playing with aggression on defense. He wasn’t giving any Miami players anything easy.
Cory Joseph penetrated the defense to get into the paint multiple times. Sometimes he’d make good reads once an opportunity came but sometimes nothing would be there and he’d keep dribbling.
Hield made three straight baskets towards the end of the quarter that took him to 14 points and cut the lead to three. That’s the Hield the Kings were missing in the first half.
Fourth Quarter:
So, uh, Jeffries huh? He can definitely carve out more minutes for himself if he keeps this up.
Hield continued on his end-of-third-quarter form to bring the Kings closer into this game. He had 19 points on 8/16 shooting with six minutes left in the quarter.
Kyle Guy and Justin James made their scrimmage debuts. I’d like to see if James can show some wing versatility if Barnes is unavailable for longer. Guy would later knock down a pull-up three while off-balance.
The Kings were scoring, but failed to stop the Heat from doing the same. Jabari Parker wasn’t providing much rim protection either.
***
Its tough to take much away from a scrimmage when the team was missing most of its best players, but it was fun to see Kings players in action again.
highlights:
summary: results as expected with no Fox or Barnes
It was better than not watching basketball
Its such a tragedy that guys like Giles and Parker can be so productive on offense, but not so productive on defense. They could easily be a starting frontcourt if they were simply average on defense.
Also can we get some sort of social media campaign to get Bjelly to start wearing a sick 70s era red white and blue headband? I’ve started wearing a headband during workouts due to my covid bangs, and it’s actually quite nice.
A headband for RORDOG? That would mess up his hair!
Ok fine you all get one rare RORDOG as Brick Tamland for Halloween pic
So awesome!
This makes me happy.
Parker looks fine, and only his weakness is poor defense…
He can create his own shot, move fast, and can finish underneath the basket.
(also his screen is okay)
Hope he can stay with us next year
 
Ugh, Parker is my Bagley comp, injuries, bad D, not looking to pass and all.
I hope he’s gone next season
Hope Bagley or Parker is gone? Or both?
for me, it’s “Both”
There should be some sort of feature inside NBA2K or a GM game where you can simulate a player’s development if he had been drafted by another organization. An algorithm that uses all available data to make an informed prediction about how a player would end up. Could the Spurs have helped BMac? Would we have derailed Kawhi? The speculative questions keeping me up at night…
Parker and Vlade.
Buddy with too much dribbling. Same shit, different day. That is all.
I didn’t see that much over-dribbling by Buddy. What pained me were the bonehead passes that resulted in turnovers and a repeat of the Buddy as PG experiment. Color me not a fan of either of those things.
Why are they giving this pretend issue so much attention?
So, uh…yeah. I would never run up to a person and “trash” them to their face because that is just rude and immature. That all being said, I’m not gonna run up to some basketball player and ask them for their autograph because that is just rude and immature.
I’ll say this, after I have met multiple Kings players and staff and I normally just say “Hey…(insert name)… how’s it going? I’m a Kings fan, what’s up with you? …small chit chat follows.
What exactly is Matt’s point here?
I love Buddy sticking up for Bagley. Bagley has got to be one of most frustrated people on the planet right now.
Nah. He’s got a well paid job and a roof above his head and gets nonstop free corona testing.
It sucks for him, sure, but some perceptive is in order, I think.
Ugh: “perspective”
Sorry, not buying the clueless millionaire laughing all the way to the bank narrative. This is the guy who had aspirations to be a rookie of the year candidate. He’s fallen so far from that I can’t imagine how bad he’s feeling especially with a sizable contingent of fans saying he’s got a fork in him.
That’s not the narrative, nor the point. People are in much worse shape right now than Bagley with no view on things getting better, so I was pushing against the “one of the most frustrated people on the planet” point.
I was restricting my focus on the basketball world but if you’re talking about the world in general I’ll agree with you.
In the US in particular with the unemployment benefit running out and the uncertainty of congress renewing it in some form there’s about to be a homeless crisis the likes of which the US has never seen. Not to mention the whole covid thing.
No wonder Bagley is always injured – he has been trampled by the onslaught of media members trying to suck his dick.
Why is the local media so soft? This dude really needs the entire media to insulate him from meanieheads on the internet?
It’s not even the first time this has happened. Anderson wrote a puff piece regarding Bagley a number of months ago which ended up with things blowing up nationally and Bagley getting clowned by TMac on the Jump.
Jesus, this is a stupid fucking take. What’s your point? How does this change anything about his situation?
Sure the eight dickheads on the Internet hassling Bagley are dickheads, but how do Internet dickheads have anything to do with anything?
It must be KHTK standard operating procedure. You pick the most ridiculous tweets on any Kings topic. Then you lump it together with larger groups of “fans” as if that’s some sort of consensus among that group… then you get to sound really smart talking down to said “fans”.
How was the pace? Were we running a lot?
Off the eye test, both sides looked slow. My wife remarked that it looked like a high school game 5 minutes in.
Sounded like a high school game too…lots of squeaky sneakers.
The level of play from both teams was about as rough as I expected. I thought Miami could have buried us if Spoelstra had not decided to take extended looks at some of his deep bench players. Hopefully Fox and Holmes will get some game time in the scrimmages before the real games start and Barnes clears quarantine.
I was a bit surprised at how much more I enjoyed the G-Man’s game call than I would have a Napier game call. I knew it would be different; I just didn’t realize how different the game itself would feel.
Meanwhile, following the game thread was even more challenging than I anticipated. I experienced multiple Error 502, Bad Gateway shutdowns early in the game, and new comments were not showing up without my having to refresh the site. Fortunately (?), the volume of comments stayed in the manageable range for this game. If we get into one of the more exciting rapid-fire, back-and-forth game threads that used to happen on a fairly frequent basis, I may have to forego my customary lurking so as not to lose track of the games themselves. I appreciate all of the hard work that has gone into getting this site to where it is now, and I’ll be overjoyed to see where you take us in the future.
Appreciate the feedback. We’re excited for these scrimmages as a way for us to test out the site before games come back in full. We’re aware of those 502 errors and working to get those resolved. As for comments, we know they aren’t automatically appearing right now. Takes us back to the old school days of refreshing. I promise we’re working constantly behind the scenes to try to improve the user experience. Keep the feedback coming, and please bear with us as we work to make it better.
The progress y’all have made is incredible, so whatever else is just around the bend is probably going to be incredible too. 2020 wasn’t all bad.
Was there a discord session going? If so, how did it hold up. I’d assume this is a backup game thread idea?
Luke is now saying “pick it apart” instead of “watch the film” in is post-game interviews.
Oooh. Marked growth in his coaching!
He must have watched the tape from his earlier press conferences and made the adjustment.
DaQuan Jeffries has Kawhi interview vibes. He’s very concise!
LOL from DaQuan’s NBA.com prospect page:
I was only able to catch the 4th quarter but Jabari Parker is sooooooo bad on defense. He got scored on like 5 straight possessions at the end of the game and gave an offensive rebound and put back when the game was within a couple points. He can score but he gives it all up and then some on the other end. Kyle Guy manages to look exceedingly competent in limited minutes. I think he drew 2 illegal screens, hit a nice contested 3 and made the best pass I saw to Justin James for a dunk. He could be sort of fun for a bench guy.
What was Bogdanovic doing other than nothing? Will be interesting how he’s paid this summer.
i thought Buddy was starting? Along with Bogdan
That’s why I never understand all the hate buddy gets. I mean actually I do understand it because he does do the boneheaded things that constantly upset people. However, even with all that it’s very rare he doesn’t contribute while bogi disappears all the time.
Bogi contributes more than simply scoring as he’s a better defender and distributor than Buddy, plus is more switchable. Buddy’s gravity levels out that disparity, but if neither is hitting their shots I want Bogi on the court
If neither are hitting their shots, then definitely I prefer bogi. It’s rare that bogi is hitting and buddy isn’t though. I think bogis playmaking has regressed since his first year though. I could be wrong because I didn’t look up any numbers. I just remember how many easy alley oops he got for teammates in his first year.
If Bogi & Holmes are on the court together, I think you’ll see those alley oops increase.
That said, when you include the facet of eating minutes, Hield more than closes the gap, in my opinion. He has been there each and every night, and that is not to be underestimated.
Hield is a bit of a PR disaster, and Walton is for some reason hell-bent on making him into something that he is not. But Hield has either been the best or 2nd best player on this team for the last few years (depending on how healthy and well Fox is playing), and it really isn’t all that close.
Agreed.
Yeah, well, God doesn’t make any mistakes.
I’m not sure I agree. If Bogi isn’t hitting his shots, he might still contribute in other areas, but if Buddy isn’t hitting his shots he usually keeps pushing and ends up with 15-20 points. Last night was a perfect example. Buddy started 0-5, but kept shooting and went 8-11 for 19 points the rest of the way. Bogi stayed 1-5 and gave us 3 points total.
i would certainly choose Buddy over Bogdan if it came down to money this summer or if Buddy wants to start and they won’t start both and Buddy needs to be traded
id bet on him rounding out his kinks/learning better defensive tricks/technique than Bogdan growing a pair (he didn’t show up for a lot of games this spring starting)
anyone have a link to stats?
https://www.basketball-reference.com/
I couldn’t find on basketball-reference, but did find here:
http://www.covers.com/sport/basketball/nba/boxscore/204292
stats.nba.com has full game stats. You just have to sort by preseason season type
It was nice to see basketball again, unfortunately it was pure Kangz basketball
I gonna agree, same shit, different day…
No improvement or change from the season games…..
Hield is still Hield that we knew……
and could someone send tape of how Heat used D. Robinson to our coach Walton ?
Kyle Guy could hardly keep up on defense.
Oh SNAP!
Back-to-back TNT games tonight, yes!
I think you are looking at next Thursday. Todays games are on NBA TV and League Pass unless I am looking at it wrong.
Oh my you’re right. I can either blame ESPN for showing the wrong week or admit my own stupidity. I’ll have to think on that one. 🙂
Let’s ask Carmichael Dave! 😉
Anyone see Bol’s game? It’s just pre-season, but the potential is obviously there. And we had a chance at #40 to take a swing at lottery-level talent. Malone even started him at SF!
Malone straight just playing around with that Scrimmage – Jokic as the point guard? Lots of Bol Bol minutes? Rolling out a squad with THREE 7-footers (ok ok Mason is 6’11”) and the shortest guy being 6’8″?
I miss competent coaching – not necessarily about that scrimmage, but he’s got Denver deep in playoff position featuring a 2nd round draft pick (Jokic) as their best player for multiple years. Sigh.
doing an AND ONE on myself:
I make fun of Vlade for trying to build a team that is basically all bigs, and enjoy it when it’s done in Denver. I dunno why it feels different in Denver than here, maybe because it worked? not sure.
I think the difference is that the Nuggets make decisions that seem logical and calculated. The Kings brass when they try to explain away their decisions appear to be rooted in outdated philosophies of the game.
For example, the Bigs that Denver are playing together seem to complement each other and are playing to their strengths. Which is easier for them, since their bigs are much more versatile than the bigs the Kings seem to covet. Jokic is one of the best playmaking big men out there, so it makes some sense to try him out as a primary guard in the pre-season to see how it goes. Bol seems to excel at rim-protection, so it can cover up a lot of the deficiencies on defense that Jokic in that situation brings. Plus they still have shooting in that lineup, and we haven’t even mentioned Michael Porter Jr yet (another possibly very versatile big man).
It feels different because the Denver bigs have some guard skills.
Yep, might be the single worst decision in the Vivek era (and there are many horrible decisions to choose from) to let that guy get fired.
Not drafting Luka in 2018 is starting to look like an all-time worst decision in franchise history, and 100% will be the worst mistake in franchise history if Luka wins an MVP or the Mavs win a title while he’s leading them.
So many colossal fuck-ups in the Vivek error… I mean era.
Nice prospect, but he’s no Daquan Jeffries
Buddy Hield’s lungs still work. That was about my main takeaway.
I will freely admit I watched the Bol Bol show on a rewind instead of the Kings game last night. Will tune in for some of the game (and the improved announcing team) tonight!
I’ll be interested to see Bol’s games going forward. That was fun to watch, but it had a bit of a Skal vs Suns vibe. He made a lot of questionable decisions that ended up working out and got a number of really friendly bounces.
His advanced stats were horrible.
Yeah I think Skal is a low-end outcome for Bol. Possibly more like consistent bench contributor is where I see him likely panning out. But the upside in terms of rim-protection and shooting (Small sample approved from limited games in college and G-league) is pretty intriguing. I think it was definitely worth a flier at the 40th pick for the Kings.
One more thing
did I forget to mention, I’ve yet to be convinced that not picking up Harry’s 4th year was a mistake
at the risk risk of being harsh, he just isn’t good.
No defense, no stretch the floor, no athleticism, no screen, but I guess he can pull some passes from time to time
Is this where all the str people are?
Badge Legend