Despite the glimmer of hope the Sacramento Kings showed during their recent 7-1 stretch, they are back on brand.
When you look at the season as a whole so far, what is true and has been true for much of the seemingly never-ending playoff drought is that they are an average, to minimally above average offensive team and a terrible defensive team.
You are shocked, right?
Let’s look at some stats:
Opponent Field Goal Percentage 48% (Kings are last in the league)
Kings Field Goal Percentage 47.8% (9th)
Opponent Three Point Percentage 39.7% (Kings are 29th)
Kings Three Point Percentage 36.8% (15th)
Opponent Rebounds 44.9 per game
Kings are averaging 43.1 rebounds per game
Opponent Turnovers 12.4 per game
Kings are averaging 13.7 per game
Opponent Points Per Game 119.3 (29th)
Kings are averaging 113.7 (13th)
The Kings are 11th in assists per game (25.8), but they let their opponents tally 26.6 assists per game, good for 27th in the league.
So, you will notice that the Kings opponents are better in all of these basic stats that are fundamental to a team’s success.
Additionally, the Kings are 13th in Pace with arguably the fastest player in the league as their franchise player and they are last in the league in defensive rating. During their recent stretch of successful 8 games, they held their opponents to 109 points per game. Over the now, five-game losing streak they are giving up 124 points. So, even when there are first-hand examples of what they need to do to win they simply can never repeat it with consistency.
It’s nothing new, the Kings haven’t had a defensive rating better than 20th since Rick Adelman’s last season as head coach. And we already detailed how they have been historically bad defensively this season.
Coming off two days of rest, the Kings showed up with no energy Thursday against the reigning Eastern Conference Champion Miami Heat.
Here is head coach Luke Walton:
We’re not healthy right now, and we have to be able to fill in and still be better than that, he said. We have to be tougher, we have to pay attention to detail. Six, seven times tonight our back-pick coverage we didn’t communicate it. It’s been the same back-pick coverage all year. I know that guys are playing more than they were, but we have to know these types of things going into games. We have to be ready to knock down and make shots. There are going to be off-shooting nights, it’s going to happen in the league, but we have to be ready to step up and whether they’re layups, free throws or three-point shots, be ready to make some shots.
So, the Kings need to talk to each other and put the round ball in the net more.
De’Aaron Fox shared his thoughts:
If your hope is to make the playoffs then you’ve got to turn those things around quickly and I just think from the 10 games before the last 6, or the last 5, we were playing totally different basketball. We were getting up the court, we were getting stops, we were sharing the ball, we’ve just got to be able to try to string those things together for as long as we can and if we’re able to do that then we put ourselves in a position to win. I think these last few games we just haven’t put ourselves in a position to win a basketball game.
Yet, it was Nemanja Bjelica who said it best:
Last couple of games we were missing some players, but that’s not an excuse, we just played bad, Bjelica said. Our energy, it was bad.
Let me rephrase that how Bjeli may have really been thinking it: F&%$ it, we don’t deserve these wins.
Rise the Cool Hand, Luke!
Taking the night off Boss..
Kings being in the bottom 1/3 of NBA defenses from 2006 to the present is really really hard to do
Thank god we signed CoJo to anchor the defense & guide the young players into a culture shift of being Defensive Minded.
One day I’m going to have a reason to wear my Fuck it, we deserve this shirt. One day.
But Bjelica is the guy who hoists semi-contested from 30 feet …. so who is he to weigh in on playing poorly or not? The guy just launches from the parking lot then he wants to chime in on smart basketball vs less than smart? Who cares what he thinks!?
And I would expect non-rotational washed up players like CoJoSlo and Bjelica to uptick their production because teams are keying on Fox and Buddy and making others make plays, and that is what we are seeing. We saw the Heat put all their focus on Fox with Butler and then send second denfender his way giving the scrubs and also a guy like Jefferies exploit this free reign to a degree.
I don’t care what the coach says either and I dont think the players do either. They have heard enough. If he wants ANY chance to salvage his job it starts tonight by (1) starting Jeffries over Buddy and/or (2) playing Guy over Joseph, and giving him a legitimate 5-10 games to play himself into that role, instead of undermining his confidence as he has done.
He is likely to neither (1) or (2) which is not so bad because a few more bad losses in a row and this coach is going to get the axe.
Badge Legend