One night removed from a beautiful offensive performance, what do the Kings do?

Yes, against Indiana – a team who is #9 in the league in defensive efficiency – the Kings had a third-quarter offensive rating of 154. The very next night, against Philadelphia – a team who is #19 in the league in defensive efficiency – the Kings had a third-quarter offensive rating of 75.

Ugh.

What was the difference? It's painfully obvious – it's Kevin Martin. Sunday night in Indiana, he had the keys to the offense. It was almost as if Eric Musselman said before that game, "Hey Kevin, the offense is yours. Take 20 shots, take 30 shots, hell take every shot you can. It's all yours."

Guess what? He nearly did. He took 23 shots and got 23 free throw attempts. Those 23 FTAs are roughly the equivalent of 10 extra shots. So, essentially, Martin took about 33 shots Sunday night. He wasn't lighting the world on fire – 8-23 from the floor, 35 percent. But he did it. And the Kings' offense? F*cking glorious. A top three performance for the season. Why? Because ordinary offensive Kevin Martin is loads better than ordinary offensive Mike Bibby, ordinary offensive Ron Artest, ordinary offensive Kenny Thomas, and ordinary offensive Brad Miller. In fact, there's like 10 players in the league who are performing better than Kevin Martin on the offensive end. None of them reside in Sacramento.

So what do we get Monday night? The ball is taken out of Martin's hands, which nearly kills one of his biggest assets – foul-drawing. Martin gets 15 shots and 5 FTAs, scores a highly efficient 23 points off that, and the Kings get smoked. In the pivotal third quarter itself – Martin had three shots and no FTAs.

How big does the f*cking neon sign need to be? Seriously, tell me how big and I'll build it. This is f*cking ridiculous.