The Sacramento Kings played host to the Indiana Pacers, marking the return of Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton and Buddy Hield were traded last season for Domantas Sabonis. Both teams have been having better success this season, but win-win trades don't fill airtime. Anticipation was high as the Kings looked to avoid extending their losing streak to four games.
Let's see how they did:
Quick Stats
Outcome: Kings 137, Pacers 114
Sacramento Kings: 137 pts, 50.5% fg, 37.2% 3pt, 86.2% ft, 28 ast, 57 reb, 18 to
Indiana Pacers: 114 pts, 40.0% fg, 32.4% 3 pt, 73.3% ft, 28 ast, 47 reb, 15 to
The Kings win! Sacramento avoided some really annoying narratives by defeating Tyrese Haliburton, Buddy Hield, and the Indiana Pacers in convincing fashion. The Kings jumped out to an early lead and never really gave up. It was funny watching frustration mount on Twitter at times when the Kings lead slipped from 25 or 20 points down to just 15 points, but the Kings were in full control of this one even though there were stretches where it felt like the Kings weren't executing well.
Tyrese Haliburton finished with just 9 points tonight, and ended his three game streak of zero turnovers, finishing with 2 tonight. Buddy Hield had 17 points on 13 shots, and was mercilessly booed every time he touched the ball. Jalen Smith had 22 points before leaving the game with a facial laceration front an inadvertent Malik Monk elbow where the refs missed the initial foul call and ended up assessing a very weak Flagrant 1 against Monk to cover their error. Stud rookie Benedict Mathurin also had 22 points, and showed why he's received so much hype this season. That kid is special, and he and Haliburton will be a potent duo for years to come.
But enough about the Pacers. This is about Sacramento tonight. Let's break down the bright spots. Oh and speaking of bright spots, Light The Beam!
The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
THE GOOD
- De'Aaron Fox: Fox got back on track after a couple rough games. He finished with 19 points on 7-11 shooting from the field, including 1-1 from 3. Fox also had 6 assists and 5 rebounds, and did all of this in 27 minutes of play. Fox had some huge plays to help secure the lead and allow him to sit for most of the fourth quarter.
- Davion's Defense: Davion Mitchell's stat line isn't going to jump off the page. He finished with 8 points, 2 assists, 2 blocks, and 1 steal. But make no mistake, Davion was HUGE in this game. He checked Tyrese Haliburton early and often and was swarming. The defensive pressure in this game was great, and Davion was the tip of the spear.
THE Better
- Harrison Barnes: The Black Falcon is back! 22 points on just 9 FGAs, along with 5 rebounds, 2 assists, and 2 steals. Barnes was a huge part of this win. The Kings are just such a better team when Barnes is firing on all cylinders.
THE best
- Team Basketball: I sometimes struggle with how to put this into words, but the Kings are simply playing as a team in a way that we haven't seen in a very long time and it is incredible. The ball movement is contagious. Everyone looks to move the ball for a better shot. The defense rotates on a string. It's team f***ing basketball and when the Kings are executing it, it's damn tough to beat.
The King of Kings
I'm giving this to Malik Monk. His stat line is absurd: 20 points on 9 shots, 6 assists, 4 rebounds, 2 steals. And the stat line doesn't fully capture it. Monk was everywhere in this game and was absolutely incredible. Monk is the best free agent signing the Kings have had in a long time, and he should absolutely earn discussion for 6th Man of the Year
Up Next
Saturday, December 3rd at Los Angeles Clippers, 1:00 PM PT
Tyrese couldn’t get a second of peace when Davion was on him, and Fox ran him around real good, too.
The Sacramento Kings have some incredibly entertaining players, just ridiculous.
Haliburton exposed
he still leaves his feet to pass and this hurt him
It’s amazing to see what good coaching can do for players with so much untapped talent and potential. Sorry to all the former poor first rounders who were sacrificed to sacramento to begin their careers before recently
I like when Fox put his shoulder in to Tyrese’s chest and he got launched like a rocket. That was a statement and it was nice to see from Fox
I along with coach Brown thought that this was overall the best defensive game the Kings have played this year. I keep preaching defense and if the team keeps this part up we will go to the playoffs. Time will tell. Yes this is a total team effort. Mitchell is a stud on defense and if he can do so on offense he will be someone to see. Yes the Kings play team basketball. Players play for each other and are unselfish. My favorite play was on a fast break when Davis who was wide open for a dunk passed the ball to Huerter and let him have some glory. That’s unselfish and team baskeetball. GO KINGS!
Give Monk the key to the city and extend him already now
I feel like has been the most consistent King this season, energy-wise. Even in the Atlanta loss, when most other Kings seemed drained of energy, he was playing the same way, coming out to dunk on someone.
Part of that is his minute load, though, IMO. He’s not playing as many minutes as the starters and that helps him keep his energy level a tad higher.
Good point, and he should stay that way. He’s been a career 6th man (and there is nothing wrong with that) and he’s having a career year to boot. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m loving his energy and workload off the bench.
Fitty aint enough but enough to make me Nostradumbass
That’s a lot of wins!
Purple Beam!
I still don’t understand how Jordan Clarkson is slept upon… I Love this guy’s game and so does the franchise…. Also the Kings destroyed some team from a place.
Pacers fell apart in the second half!
The Pacers head off to Utah next.
Beam me up!
Dance thread!
Don’t fake the funk on a nasty Monk!
It was a team win!
Uptown Monk You Up
♫ Beamers….
Beamers….
Beamers…
Beamers.. Are Gonna Kick you in the Face ♫
Did you order this Tyrese Haliburton from Wish.com?
We got one!
Hard to choose King of Kings- can’t really disagree about Malik but on reflection I’d probably go with Domas who was on fire especially in the 1st half. You can’t go wrong either way.
At the end of the 1st, I was certain Domas would have the triple-double by halftime.
Yay! They took care of business like they had to.
Call me petty or merciless but I’m liking this re Buddy
I actually like that we have the same swagger as a fan base as GS, MIA, etc. This year our fans are letting players who shit on us, bad reffing, and brutal fouls from the other team be heard just like they’re letting the good stuff be heard. It’s about time.
100%. I’m over players coming thru here for 16 years, collecting a check, padding stats, and not delivering. Lets stop being the “hey, come on, these are our guys!” type fans and start letting certain players know that they wasted our time and money.
The fan reaction tonight was perfect: tons of love for Hali as he was a total pro and wanted to be here; tons of boos for Buddy who complained to the media about wanting a better contract and played the game to hit his contract incentives.
Wanting a better contract? All he wanted was an extension, as would any player coming off his rookie deal, after leading the team in scoring, and shooting nearly 43% from three on 8 attempts per game, and helping win a playoff drought best 39 games.
Here is what he said
I don’t see any issue with what he said, do you?
There’s also this. Good for the team and team culture for a player to be insulting the org to the media?:
“Sacramento Kings shooting guard Buddy Hield continued to lash out at the team’s contract offers ahead of Monday’s deadline for rookie-scale extensions.
Chris Haynes of Yahoo Sports reported Wednesday the Kings presented a four-year, $90 million offer, while Hield and agent Brandon Rosenthal are pushing for closer to $110 million.
Jason Anderson of the Sacramento Bee provided the guard’s comments following Wednesday night’s exhibition victory over Melbourne United from Australia:
“I see it like an insult. I feel like I’m worth more than that. If you say I’m your guy and you want to build around me, I just need you to show it. Actions speak louder than words. If you’re just talking and not showing nothing, I’m not going to respect it. I love playing here. I want to be here. This is my home. I’m trying to buy a house here, but everything is on stall mode because I don’t know if they’ll really commit to me.”
Again, I don’t see a problem with what he said. He wanted a fat extension and deservedly so. What he said is really no different than what have the players in the league say when they want an extension.
Go google what Tyler Herro said this offseason before his extension, or Jordan Poole. It’s a normal occurrence.
I think the problem was that the extension talks stretched into camp, where the press continually brought it up, and came close to the deadline. Had his extension come during summer, during the dark days of NBA press, we would have heard nothing.
I find it embarrassing how Hield and Bagley were treated, Buddy in particular. He did what he was asked to do, which is spread the floor, and he did it better than anyone in the league other than Steph Curry for six years.
If he sucked as a point guard, he should never have been put in that position in the first place. There are plenty of things that I wish Buddy had been better at, but that applies to any player you’d care to name.
Hield didn’t miss games, and he was out there 99% of the time, providing shooting at an elite level. Why would any player want to come to Sacramento if a player like Buddy Hield gets booed upon his return by an arena packed with fans?
16.9/4.4/2.5 on 40.2% shooting from three on very high volume. What a hump. This city welcomes back players who didn’t have half the value to the Kings as Buddy Hield.
“But the losses!” Hield was here for six of those sixteen years. I’m happy that the trade was made, because we got Sabonis. Freeing up Buddy’s salary was helpful in making other things happen, and the Kings are better off for it.
He certainly doesn’t deserve your derision for advocating for himself, or intimating that the organization was a shitshow. It was.
“Don’t tell people how to fan!”
Fuck off. Try keeping things in context.
Anytime Bagley shows up, I want to track down Vlade Divac and boo the hell out of him. But not Bagley himself…maybe his dad…
Spencer Hawes, Jason Terry, Marvin Bagley and now Buddy Hield are the only players I’ve ever seen singled out for booing like we saw Buddy get last night. Their supposed offenses were saying or doing something that offended or angered Kings fans. In the case of Hield, his mistake was taking his messy contract negotiations public and including several comments during that time suggesting the Kings should give him what he wanted because no good players would ever come to Sacramento. Suppose that has since been perceived as an unnecessary gut punch to Kings fans from someone who said he wanted to be here.
Get hold of me if you put that into action.
Can’t remember the last time I gave Andy a thumb…let alone the fifth thumb. But I agree. Buddy deserved better and the crowd last night was garbage. MVP chant style ignorance.
You are as soft as a kittens tummy.
Sacramento doesn’t do disrespectful. If you get booed here you earned it. Buddy didn’t earn it.
About 90% of the fans booed Buddy last night, so according to you, Sacramento does do disrespectful. Sorry to let you down.
Nah, I’m against booing him. He was nothing but a pro here, and a very durable one at that. Like I said in the game thread, it would be like booing Jason Thompson if he were to return.
I’m on the fence for this one. On one hand, boo if that’s your jam. If it’s not, don’t boo. I’m not a boo’er anyway (outside of being a smartass about it) so I guess that’s mostly it in my case.
Eh, it is what it is.
I agree. All basketball players are human beings and should be treated as such. I liked what Fox did in post game. Giving Buddy a big huge showed me Fox is a great player and and a great person. What Buddy said about the Kings after the game showed me some class.
But if the Kings lose, smiling at and shaking hands with opposing players shows that Fox isn’t competitive enough!
Shaking hands doesn’t show lack of competitive juices.As a coach I would like you to find someone more competitive than me.Not bragging but telling it like it was. I would make Brown sound like a mime. But after every game win or lose I went over and shook coaches and players hands. That’s what you do.
help me finish this Jack Handy sentence:
when he made the first free throw after the technical foul, I smiled and thought “good for Buddy”, but then when he missed the second …
“…I hope if dogs ever take over the world, and they chose a king, they don’t just go by size, because I bet there are some Chihuahuas with some good ideas.”
Comparing Buddy’s time here and JT’s isn’t fair. JT wasn’t half the distraction or disruptor that Buddy was.
When was he a distraction or disruptor? You can criticize his play at times, but IMO, he was a pro 100% of the time.
Yep. He was a PR distraction during his contract negotiation, but that was pretty much it.
Don’t downplay how bad and distracting it got during the negotiations:
Hield hinted he could push for a trade.
“If it don’t get done,” Hield said, “then I feel like, me and my team might look somewhere else and probably another home. Until then, we’ll see. We’ll what happens here.”
Distracting to whom?
A struggling franchise has one of its best players threatening to blow-up the roster if they don’t get their needs met, and they do it in the media? It certainly didn’t help the team that year.
My guess is that it had zero impact on any teammate (all of whom likely had the attitude of “go get yours!”) or the coaching staff.
It was a sandburger for fans. If they want to boo that, that is their prerogative. Personally, I don’t see the point.
Honestly, all of you guys should have been at the game last night b/c Buddy could have used some love.
Meh. If people wanted to boo, that’s their business. I’m happy that I was not counted among them.
Ha! “If people wanted to boo, that’s their business.”…but you just questioned me for the last hour about why I booed?!
When did I question you? I asked to whom you felt Hield was a distraction. Other than that, I think that I was pretty consistent in saying (a) boo if you like, (b) I really don’t see the point, and (c) I would not personally boo him.
Decaf. Consider it.
Don Rickles over here. Nice one!
I would have been busy actually rooting the Sacramento Kings in a W that the team needed for a variety of reasons.
Boo’ing Buddy probably would have been somewhere around the 1000th item on the to do list for me personally.
The boos were so hard for Buddy last night, I honestly think it would helped change the vibe if the pro-Buddy crowd would have turned out to support him.
Look it’s really this simple. I don’t care if Buddy got boo’d or not. He’s a footnote in the past for me, nothing more nothing less. I wouldn’t have boo’d but I understand that people might. I don’t really care much either way personally outside of I wouldn’t have bothered.
Because he said out loud what every single player has to do every time their contract is up?
I thought that was all a bit silly last night.
I appreciated that Buddy didn’t take any of the bait in his pre-game interview either.
Buddy never showed any basketball humility or self-awareness, and that’s really all he needed to show for Kings fans to forgive all his shortcomings and embrace him (see: Barnes, Harrison). If you’re going to take star money and (more importantly) talk and carry yourself like a star, you need to play like a star. Buddy didn’t. Nobody likes the guy with a big ego but not the skills to back it up. That guy is annoying. Buddy’s contract agitations would’ve been quickly forgotten if he’d come even close to living up to the deal he signed (which, at the time, was widely seen as a fair value based on his play the previous season).
Catch and shoot Buddy was a fan favorite. Buddy trying to be a more complete guard was an interesting experiment but both Walton and Buddy himself should have reeled that in when it was obvious that it wasn’t working.
The Buddy Chuck-its of last year though – yeesh. That was annoyingly self-centered. Going 1-11 on terrible shot selection in an obvious attempt to shoot your way into a trade (one way or another) should have pissed off everyone associated with the team.
Jesus. “Hield needs to prostrate himself before the Kingdom, and beg for forgiveness.”
Absolutely delusional.
What do you know about monarchies?
So you are upset with the contract he got, which you admit was deserving at the time, and the fact that he didn’t live up to it? And was it really star money? It was a 4 year $86M guaranteed contract. For reference, Barnes signed a 4 year $85M extension a few months earlier. Do you boo Barnes if he get traded because he hasn’t performed to his contract?
Are you upset with the even bigger extension that Fox go that he has YET to live up to? If the Kings are floundering at the deadline and Fox is traded, do you boo him too?
I’m not trying to be argumentative, but just want to know if folks are upset with Buddy the person vs. Buddy the player/contract.
If fans are butt hurt over negotiations over a deserved contract extension that spilled into the media near the deadline, than we need thicker skin.
The dude didn’t complain about his role, even when he came off the bench, never was a locker room issue, never an off the court issue, missed just a handful of games over 6 years, was the 2nd best 3pt shooter in the league during that time…but fuck him for wanting to get paid for being the leading scorer on a record setting shit franchise? I don’t get it.
Well said Adam
His interview comments and social media posts didn’t help. ““One minute I made a three they liked me, and then one minute they hate you,” That’s how Sacramento fans are, so you gotta embrace it.”
There was a twitter post complaniing about him scoring 2 points, his response was “dem checks still coming in”
Hield’s assertion in your first paragraph has been proven true, and his twitter response was a perfectly elegant fuck you to the other guy.
“You had two points in a game, loser!”
Check out the other eighty-one, genius.
So we’re booing him for defending himself? I personally like it when people troll the trolls
I’m not in the booing side just stating facts. Buddy and Bagley both implied they didn’t want to be here and got booed. Tyrese stated multiple times he like it here and got a standing ovation. Simple.
Was at the game guy in front of me was like if we’re booing Buddy you got to boo Hali too and he did every chance he got. Tyrese and his pal JJ have talked more crap then Buddy ever did.
The play that stuck out for me was when TD stole the ball and had a clear breakaway with Huerter leading and he chose to pass to Red Velvet for the dunk rather than take the clear path himself. It was true deferential team basketball.
yep
You’re right, but it broke my entire heart not getting to see what TD was going to do. The man nearly flies.
We saw him fly back to back in this one!
I wish Barnes would look to defer around the basket a bit more. He tends to get tunnel vision when driving and will take the harder shot than pass it to someone who has an easier lane alot of the time I notice
We need a Barnes to attack the basket. He gets fouled a lot and shoots great free throws. You can’t always win by shooting threes.
Barnes has a 62.4 TS% while shooting 28% on 3’s this season. He’s been exceptionally efficient since the slow start.
Not being just a spot up 3pt shooter is good for Barnes and the team. Probably the same with Murray…in time
Yep. I think we are seeing the versatility of Harrison Barnes on display this season. It’s valuable in a lot of ways.
When he drives to the basket with that ball over his head, its almost guaranteed to be 2 points, or foul shots.
He is just so damn strong. I really love when he does that.
We’re supposed to want to trade him, remember…?
Oh, we are definitely booing the absolute shit out of HB if he’s playing elsewhere next year.
Squinting from a bar in Terminado, Costa Rica and I can see The Beam.
Wonderful team basketball. The place erupted when Davion blocked the basketball on the steal and layup attempt by a Pacer.
Go Kings!
I can see it and smell it. What a perfect place to watch a Kings game. Go Kings
The elephant in the room remains, however: What needs to be done to get Keegan out of his slump?
And it is definitely a slump. It isn’t just the shooting, he’s making passes that turn the ball over. He’s a cerebral player, and at times it seems that he’s not completely present. Other times, you can literally see him overthinking, he hesitates, the brief window has closed for a shot or pass, and he may force the ball, or freeze the team’s movement.
Murray is going to be a legitimate starter, and I mean this season, but maybe bringing him in with that hyper-athletic second unit could help him find his groove. I really don’t know what ought to be done, but continuing on the same path hasn’t solved it. I doubt it’ll shake his confidence if he gets his 25-30 minutes per game outside of the starting five.
You don’t need to figure it out for him or the franchise…. Keegan is in good hands.
Murray will be fine . Patience is needed and a much better player will be the result .
I agree. He’s a ball player.
I’d be curious to see how the team would do starting Davis for Murray — that lineup has a net rating of +27.5 in 26 minutes, and the best defensive lineup of any group with over 20 minutes this season.
Davis’ shooting, athleticism, poise, and defensive versatility are making waves, and his focus has been really impressive. I think he’s earned a bigger role