One losing streak ends, another begins?

The Kings finally won a couple of games, beating two fellow bottom-feeders on the road and avoiding what was starting to feel like an inevitable 20-game losing streak. It doesn’t change their place at the bottom of the standings, and there’s still plenty of losing ahead. But for a team that hadn’t won away from home since early December, even small relief counts.

Streak Ended

Just when it seemed like the Kings might never win another game this season, they actually managed to win two games last week, both against fellow tankers on the road.  Before the Kings win in Memphis last Monday, the Kings hadn’t won on the road since December 6th.  Even with those two wins, the Kings are still holders of the worst record in the league at 14-48, but they do have one of the softest schedules in the entire league remaining.  Still, I’m sure it was good mentally for the guys to get a couple of wins under their belt.

A bummer of a season for Keegan Murray

Last week I mentioned how one of the few things I was looking forward to for the remainder of the season was seeing how Keegan Murray would do down the stretch of the season now that he’s back from injury. Well, that didn’t last long as now Murray is dealing with yet another ankle injury. This one is supposedly more minor and only expected to keep him out for two more weeks, but at this point, they should not be in any rush to bring him back. Let him get healthy and hopefully come back stronger than ever for next season. It’s been an incredibly disappointing season for Keegan but the last thing we’d want is for him to get any lingering issues from bringing him back too early.

Clifford the big purple dog

Nique’s had an interesting rookie season and this week was no different.  Against Memphis, Nique had an all around good game, scoring 12 points to go with 6 rebounds, 6 steals (the second most by a Kings rookie since Kenny Smith had 7 in 1988) and 5 assists.  He followed that up with a 15 point, 4 steal game against Houston, then a 13 points 8 rebound, 7 assist, 2 steal game in a win against Dallas (where he shot jut 6-19) and then had maybe his best overall game of the season against the Lakers with 26 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists a steal and a block while shooting 11-18 from the field.  For the season, Nique is now averaging 7.3 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 0.9 steals while shooting 40.7% from the field and 32.1% from three.  He does a little bit of everything on both ends of the court, showcasing very good defensive and playmaking instincts.  The most worrying thing is his inefficiency as a scorer, as he’s only shooting 37.2% from the field in 12 games as a starter.  He’s definitely streaky on that end of the floor as showcased by varying good and bad performances, but he will need to get more consistent over the future.  The nice thing about him is that he finds ways to contribute even when he isn’t scoring, so I think he’ll be able to carve out a role for himself just based on that.  I also think that he’s been thrown into the deep end of the pool and might be a little bit out of his depth right now, but that should hopefully help long term even if there’s some struggling to start.  Nique would probably look a lot better on a better team where he isn’t asked to do as much, but he’s also getting way more opportunity and time on the court right now than he probably would if this team was good, so hopefully he’s making the most of it and he can be a nice piece for this team in the future.

Nobody asked for this “Sprite Stat Tracker”

Maybe this is just me finding things annoying but this latest gimmick the Kings broadcast is doing of making the games try to look like an NBA 2K game where the players names are highlighted whenever they have the ball and the shot charts and everything else are on the screen is stupid.  I understand it’s likely a paid sponsorship thing with Sprite but still, it doesn’t need to be there for the whole game.  The broadcast as a whole needs a serious revamp, but that’s a conversation for another time.

Basketball with Stakes

I actually watched a couple of games this week between some of the NBA’s top teams, and what a difference watching basketball with actual stakes is compared to this Kings season.  Both games involved the Oklahoma City Thunder as they took on the Detroit Pistons and the Denver Nuggets.  Against Detroit, the Thunder didn’t have SGA but they still hung in there thanks to their excellent supporting cast.  I had a couple takeaways from that game: Detroit is the real deal and Daryl Morey is going to look like an idiot for giving up on Jared McCain.  The Pistons are currently #1 in the Eastern Conference and their two best players (Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren) are both under 25 years old.  Cade is definitely the engine that makes this team run, but the supporting cast just fits really well. Tobias Harris is still out there doing his thing as a tertiary scorer, Ausar Thompson isn’t quite as good as Amen but is still a defensive menace. Duren is one of the best young bigs in the league and is a force on both ends of the court.  The Pistons are 2nd in the NBA in Defensive Rating (the Thunder are 1st) and have already passed up their win total from last year (44) with a month and a half to go in the season. What a turnaround for a team that finished with just 14 wins two seasons ago.  Rebuilds don’t have to take forever, and the Pistons (and Thunder) are proof.

On the Thunder’s side, Jared McCain has fit in like a glove since coming over from Philly. You may remember how McCain looked like an early lock for Rookie of the Year for Philadelphia last season before unfortunately tearing his meniscus and missing the rest of the season.  This season, he barely got off the bench for the 76ers as VJ Edgecombe got more opportunity, but the 76ers still should have found a way to get him involved. Instead, they sent him to the Thunder for a late 1st and three second round picks.  At the time Daryl Morey called this “selling high”, which I guess it could have been if the 76ers weren’t going to be playing him, but he looks awesome in Oklahoma City, and is averaging 11.8 points on 47.7% from the field and 42.9% from three in 19.4 minutes off the bench. When you have a stupid amount of assets like the Thunder have, you can exploit buy low opportunities like this.  The rich get richer.

The other game I watched was the Thunder vs. Nuggets. I admittedly only watched part of this one after I had gotten an alert that Nikola Jokic had gotten into a fight after Lu Dort tripped him. Fight was too strong a word, but Jokic looked as angry as I’ve ever seen him, and to be fair, he had cause as Dort did intentionally trip him which could have caused a major injury.  It was a dirty play, and Dort was rightly ejected.  That game ended up going to overtime, with both teams missing big shots at the end of regulation (SGA was spectacularly blocked by Christian Braun on his game winning attempt and Cameron Johnson missed a wide open corner three on the other end) but OKC was able to get the win in overtime even as SGA sat (it was his first game back from injury and OKC wanted to be careful with his minutes).  The Nuggets aren’t at full strength, but they’re still a team I would not want to be playing in the playoffs, especially if they get their weapons back before then. Jokic is still the best player in the world, and incidents like this one are going to spark some intrigue heading into the playoffs.

You may have noticed I spent more time talking about these two random games not involving the Kings than I did about the Kings this week, and that’s because it’s much easier to talk about things that spark joy, and good basketball is still very fun to watch and it’s still out there.  I’m very much looking forward to the actual NBA playoffs, even if the Kings won’t be among the participants.

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Upcoming Schedule:

• Tuesday, March 3rd vs. Phoenix Suns
• Thursday, March 5th vs. New Orleans Pelicans
• Sunday, March 8th vs. Chicago Bulls