After an impressive comeback in Charlotte for their first road win of the season, the Kings traveled to South Beach to try to defeat the Miami Heat for the second time this season. In their first matchup just four days ago, the Kings defeated the Heat despite some flashy Tyler Herro heroics. Going into tonight’s rematch, I fully expected the Heat to be ripened and ready to exact their revenge. The Heat were without their leader in Jimmy Butler, but without De’Aaron Fox, who suffered a knee bone bruise in the last game, the Kings needed to put forth their best effort tonight to continue their winning streak. Let’s see how they did:
Quick Stats
Outcome: Kings lose, 107-110
Sacramento Kings: 107 pts, 47.7% fg, 36.1% 3 pt, 85.7% ft, 29 ast, 39 reb, 12 to
Miami Heat: 110 pts, 49.4% fg, 32.4% 3 pt, 84.6% ft, 27 ast, 46 reb, 11 to
What an absolute heartbreaker. After a close battle for all 48 minutes, the Kings and Heat were trading baskets back and forth in final possessions. Domantas Sabonis made four consecutive clutch free throws, the last of which lined the Kings up to be tied with the Heat with 12.5 seconds remaining. All they needed was a stop to extend this game into overtime, but Tyler Herro had other plans. Despite some great defensive coverage by Terence Davis, Herro made an incredibly rude 3-pointer to put the Heat on top with just 1.8 seconds to spare.
The final sequence of tonight's game … ???? pic.twitter.com/4zyyYnQLHs
— Kings on NBCS (@NBCSKings) November 3, 2022
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
The Good
- Back Door Cuts: Where the Kings struggled against the Heat’s zone defense (more on that later), they thrived when the Heat tried to match up with them man-to-man. Two-man action between Domantas Sabonis and Kevin Huerter displayed some beautiful basketball, as Huerter often read the heavy coverage and let himself out the back door and to the wide open paint. Sabonis was sure to reward Huerter’s heady play with spot on passes that led him straight to the basket. We even saw Sabonis be on the receiving end of this with a beautiful pass from Keegan Murray in the 2nd quarter. When the Kings struggled from distance, they were able to find their offensive rhythm again by playing smart, composed basketball. This return to basics on the offensive end prevented the Heat from ever getting a strong hold on the game.
- Microwave Monk: Malik Monk had his best game so far this season. In 22 minutes off the bench, Monk finished with 19 points and seven assists. Although he made some untimely mistakes in crunch time, he was a big reason why the Kings were even in a position to win in those final minutes. Monk provided just what the Kings needed, when they needed it. As the Heat went on one of their runs in the 3rd quarter, Monk responded with a spark of energy on both sides of the ball. Upon entering, Monk immediately went to work, hitting three shots in a row and assisting Domantas Sabonis on his first 3-pointer of the season to push the Kings on a 11-6 run and give them the lead back. Monk also had a huge play in the final minute of the game with an aggressive drive to the basket to set up Sabonis to be fouled so he could tie the game at the line.
The BAd
- Struggling Against the Zone: The Kings showed either a lack of recognition, lack of execution, or both against Miami’s zone. The Heat often fell back into a 2-3 zone, leaving a lot of open real estate in the middle of their defense. However, the Kings failed to consistently get the ball into the painted area and instead worked the ball around the perimeter for 3-point looks that didn’t often fall. Overall, the Kings shot 13-36 from distance, where many of these misses came against the zone after only getting perimeter ball movement.
The Ugly
- Gifting Chances: The Kings gave up a total of nine offensive rebounds to the Heat tonight, where each one felt like a stab in the heart. In such a close game, every opportunity counts, and the Heat are not a team you want to give extra chances to. With a six-point lead and under six minutes to go, the Kings gave up back to back possessions where the Heat capitalized on second and third opportunities to quickly cut that lead to just two points. It’s sequences like the that can really haunt a team when looking back, and it’s the little things that can end up mattering the most.
The King of Kings
For what feels like the first time this season, Domantas Sabonis was not handcuffed by the officials and was allowed to play a full game of basketball. He took advantage of this opportunity and finished with 22 points, 12 rebounds, eight assists, and just two fouls. Sabonis is such an integral part of the Kings’ offense, as he is a focal point for facilitation and isolation, and his ability to stay on the floor tonight gave him the opportunity to showcase exactly that.
Operation: MCNAIR – Season 2 Watch
Tonight’s charity is the Department of Sound, which supports the mental health of students through the use of music and audio. Donate here and be sure to let Will know via Twitter (@WillofthaPeople) or e-mail (donations@kingsherald.com) so he can continue to track donation totals.
Up Next
Saturday, November 5th @ Orlando Magic – 2:00 P.M. (PT)
Zebras missed Herro’s steps!
FIENDS
Starring: the refs
SLAMSON NOT HAPPY
…and omg, I just realized SLAMSON is an anagram for….
SALMONS
I have never seen Slamson and Salmons in the same room at the same time. Now we know who’s underneath the costume.
When lions smell like fish…
In the future quantum computing and 24K cameras AI tech should replace human refs. We can send them all to Slamson’s Slaughterhouse
The league fixes games against the Kings. I’ve seen it my entire life.
I gained a lot of respect for Mike Brown for what he said tonight and he said it with a lot more patience and class than I would have.
Vivek should make a statement as well about this. It’s bullshit It has to change and The two minute report is not enough!
It doesn’t stop there, Vivek is also an accomplice. Big market teams make more money when they win. Stir in some shady backroom deals and you can see how it is more profitable for small market teams to lose. The nba, its refs, and ownership groups are all in on it. 16 years of not making the playoffs is really hard to do, but it just starts to make a whole lot more sense when you realize it’s all been engineered. Why else would the referees be held to zero accountability by the league?
I have Milwaukee and San Antonio on line 1…
I agree. Organizations that drafted and developed players well, had stability, and limited distractions.
The argument/conspiracy that the league wants small market teams to fail is ludicrous. Draft better, develop players and stop throwing a pity party about refs.
Mike is right.
He travelled.
Herro did a jump set and then a two step side step.
Second chance points mortally wounded the Kings as did the missed bunny at the end of the 1st Half.
I think it was Referee Magoo that was closest to the play.
The Kings made 1 stop
in the last 3 minuets.
That too.
But the refs engineered the perpetual kings losing for 16 seasons!!!
Hero got by with a Harden
28 points on 28 shots by Barnes, Mitchell, and Murray. That’s not going to cut it.
Also, Barnes does so little on the court. He processes the game rather slow when he gets the ball, so the “read and react” doesn’t suit him too well.
Keegan looked tired and out of it all game. Shots were short, seemed overly passive.
The Barnes of the first half of last season would’ve been great for us THIS season. Ugh.
This season? It seems to me, the hill is under Barnes.
Sounds like it was an entertaining game where the final result could have gone either way. Gives me more hope that the team is turning the corner, especially Ox. Barnes is starting to really worry me, though.
Fun game to watch RPO, 26 lead changes.
Neither team really ever pulled away. Yeah, those are really entertaining kinds of games.
It was a really fun game (except for the outcome).
The team is more competitive than last season.
I can’t kill them over this one. I thought they were going to get stomped in this one, but they played hard and kept themselves in it down to the last minute.
Now we need to regroup and run Orlando out of their building.
Last minute? If the refs had called a travel on Herro, they end up in OT with a chance to win. This came down to a second and change.
♫ THERE GOES TYLER HERRO
HE’S TRAVELING! ♫
I didn’t even notice this live but the ref has no excuse, he’s right there!
And he has to be paying attention to Herro’s feet to determine whether or not it’s a three-point shot!
If you have a directive from your bosses to not let the kings win, this is how you miss it
So you believe there is a league wide conspiracy to hold the Kings back?
I don’t think the Kings need any help in that regard
ouch!
Does the NBA still do that thing where they acknowledge ref mistakes a day or two later?
In the Last Two Minute Report? Yeah. It’ll get acknowledged today.
So what1
One of the most bias non calls in a basketball game. The ref is looking right at Heros feet at 10 feet away. He had to see it. Now Brown will get fined and there goes another bias call and there is nothing the Kings can do.You watch it will happen again,
That was a fun game. Kings played hard. I can deal with these kinds of loses. We’ve been right there in every game except the Warriors game. We really need to work on securing the defensive rebound. Too many times we’ve played great defense, force a tough shot, only to give up an offensive rebound. Those mistakes haunt teams in close games. Looking forward to the next one.
Orlando is going to pay for this!
Along with Operation McNair We need to institute operation Coach Brown where pay his fine for speaking truth to power
I will chip in.
Operation BROWN (Blind Refs Of Win Now). Damn Zebras can’t even give us 10th seed ????
HELL YES
Still early, but starting to believe that Huerter is for real.
He keeps dropping a torrent of 3s.
Red Dawn
The lyric “Red rain is pouring down” needs to be played every time Huerter hits a 3 at home.
Definitely better than the Rick Astley song….
I’m actually OK with the Rick Astley song too…maybe the PA team can go back and forth??
RickRolling since 2006
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling
Wait, so the Kings record-breaking playoff drought was born around the same time Rickrolling was born?
It’s an obvious travel, but the thing that killed the Kings was poor defense down the stretch.
With 4:40 left to go, the Kings are up 96-92. In these last couple of minutes, the Heat score 8 out of their 10 shots for 18 points. That just can’t happen if you want to win games against good teams.
Very true.
I thought what killed Sac was their offensive execution. It wasn’t very good down the stretch, either.
They simply didn’t execute. That’s why they lost.
Not really. More to it.
The players did not defend well, grab rebounds, navigate screens, or make enough shots. Sure there are always going to be calls for both teams that are missed, and good teams over come that adversity. This team simply does not play well enough to be a consistent winner.
Murray did not shoot well, Mitchell either, Sabonis missed some easy looks, and on and on and on.
Some of those points were because of costly turnovers.
I mentioned this below, Brown’s self-proclaimed potential DPOY-type player, KZ, doesn’t play a single minute in the 4th? The Kings made 1 defensive stop in the last 3 mins, and KZ is on the bench…makes no sense to me.
Because Brown was blowing smoke. If KZ was so good, why did the Heat let him go?
Up 4 in a game with almost 5 minutes left in a back and forth affair really isn’t much padding at all. There were more possessions of good defense than bad imo. Heat made some tough shots. There were a couple of drives we gave up too easy, but then we came back and did the same to them. Even that last 3 points was well covered, so much so that he had to travel to get the shot off.
Just because I have to acknowledge just how good Miami is at finding and developing NBA talent, they played just 3 players last night night that were drafted (Bam, Herro, Lowry), the rest of their roster players were undrafted.
The Kings, on the other hand, rolled out 6 players that were drafted JUST IN THE LOTTERY, and that doesn’t count Len who was a DNP/CD, who is also a lottery pick.
One franchise is not like the other.
It was a travel. So are an overwhelming number of step back threes, as well as myriad forays to the basket.
Was it a bad non-call? I suppose? Another way of looking at it is that it was just another Wednesday in the NBA. The rules as it pertains to traveling (among other things) are whistled (or not whistled) much differently in the NBA than pretty much anywhere else. As a grumpy old bastard –
I miss the more pure form of the game, but I guess it is what it is.
All of that said, I hold the Kings far more accountable for the loss than the refs. Mitchell continues to have a look of a guy whose ultimate ceiling might be Patrick Beverley, and that’s only if everything goes right. P-Bev is a fine addition to any roster, but if he’s your starting point guard, you better have some elite talent around him. Davis was a waste of eight minutes. Aside from Sabonis, Huerter and Monk, no one really showed out for the Kings last night.
This. The team put themselves in a position to lose based on a freak non-call.
The Kings made enough mistakes that they should be held accountable for this loss. However, calling out a bad non-call by an official does not wash away that accountability. It merely highlights what should be accountability of the referee to make the correct call in a critical situation where that referee has clear visibility on a relatively slow-moving play right in front of him.
You can take the position that the Kings put themselves in position to lose, but you can also take the position that the Kings had made enough good plays to be in position to win the game. The violation occurred with roughly 3.9 seconds left on the game clock. The Kings would have inbounded the ball from the near sideline near the top of the arc on their defensive side of the court. That’s enough time for an inbound pass and a dribble (perhaps two) before taking a shot. The non-call robbed them of that opportunity.
Sure the Kings made mistakes so did the Heat. That’s part of a game where nobody is perfect. What I am frustrated about is a travel that was not called that won the game. You all can blame the team but the fact is they put themselves either to win or at least go to overtime. That’s what should have happened. What I really liked is Brown stood up for his team even knowing he would get fined. Walton won’t do that. That’s why I would chip in to help with that fine. He is trying to change the culture of this team. He is going to back them and I believe they are going to back him. Culture is starting to change. Lastly I don’t think he should be fined but that referee should be dismissed or fined. After the game Brown was told by the referee that Hero didn’t travel. There in itself is the bias.
Exactly.
Whenever someone says
“well the Kings made mistakes”
Yeah, so did the other team.
A blown call has consequences for the team it was blown against.
Kings made mistakes.
Heat made mistakes.
Refs made a mistake that helped the Heat.
It’s a nice sentiment by Brown, but the sad truth is the Kings are irrelevant to the point of not earning any consideration for bias one way or the other. They have a long, long way to go before conspiracy theories can even remotely apply to this team. They are just so unimportant within the pantheon of the NBA right now, and have been for quite some time.
The refs clearly made a mistake. The team would have gotten another opportunity to win had the refs not made that mistake, but they had opportunities throughout the game to secure a win and didn’t capitalize. It sucks that they didn’t get one more opportunity but the final result may have still been the same had they gotten it. It’s all a wash to me. I can understand that the blown call may cause people to question the competence of the individual refs but I’m not gonna put the blame on the refs for this loss.
2 things can be simultaneously true at the same time: The refs missed a call that had huge implications in the outcome of the game AND the Kings missed plenty of opportunities to not put themselves in that position. I’m sure Mike Brown said as much to the team. Most good coaches do: ” Hey those refs fucked us on that last play, but we have to worry about what we can control, and we left a lot of plays out there on the hardwood, that if we made, that blown call doesn’t even matter”
I disagree with the PatBev take. Mitchell’s rookie year would have been PatBevs 2nd best year in the league in a 12 year career. The character too, they’re opposite. PatBev talks shit incessantly and dirty plays aren’t beneath him. Mitchell is tough, quiet, and nothing dirty about the way he plays. Mitchell is certainly struggling so far this year, but I wouldn’t write him off with caps on ceiling, even if he struggles throughout the year. Sophomore slump is a ubiquitous term for a reason.
Solid take in paragraph 1, and rec’d.
I will reconsider my thoughts on Mitchell as soon as he provides me with a reason to. Two things have given Beverley a career in the NBA: his defensive tenacity and his ability to stick the three consistently enough to stay on the floor. He is a career .376 shooter from beyond the arc, with a TS% of .545. Mitchell is currently at .319/.493. He has a ways to go to even get to Beverley’s career level, much less surpass it.
No timeout for the last play is a tough one
amazing basketball in that first quarter. I thought Keegan should have been on the court to close the game. I get it, his shot was not falling, but he was still contributing out there. that Miami crowd was intense. Lowry was a beast.
He was a team best +7 last night. I’m not sure why he wasn’t out there either. Brown pulled him not long after that silly flagrant foul to begin the 4th. Murray exited the game with nine and half minutes to play, and he never came back in.
the commentators said maybe it was because Miami was going small. but …. Murray can punish a mismatch. so, actually, Miami going small is another reason to have Murray out there.
Yeah, the Kings need to create the mismatch for the opposing team once in a while. Put Murray out there and punish the other team for playing small.
Great point by Mo on last night’s podcast: Where was KZ, the defensive specialist/potential DPOY, in the 4th?? The team had an 8 point lead with 8 minutes left and KZ gets zero minutes? Isn’t that exactly what you got him for, to make stops?
From starter to DNP/CD in just over a week’s time. Also a DNP/CD in the two games against his former team, who he just might know best the offensive tendencies of.
Lots of great commentary, I’m bummed that we couldn’t execute defensively at the end. There were also some times when we did well defensively but Miami just made the shot. I’m still very bullish on the kings as I believe that Davis will hopefully return to preseason form where he looked great, Murray will have off nights but will continue to get better. BROWN will figure out his rotations and Holmes cannot and probably will not remain a hot piling steam of Doodoo forever
Davis has been inconsistent, which really hurts the bench. He and Monk were supposed to be the punch off the bench.
Holmes looks checked out. He had that one play where he was wide open down low and the ball didn’t get to him. Slumped shoulders, head down, just looked like he was frustrated and didn’t really participate much after that.
I noticed that too but forgot about it until you mentioned it … I think he misses the PNR he had with Hali. I’m still bullish on this team.
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