The biggest difference between tonight and the last few was the effort the team showed all night. The team struggled mightily with its shot and decision making all night, sometimes trying too hard to make a certain pass, or teammates not being aware of their surroundings, and it allowed the Bucks to get out to the early lead, especially in a brutal 2nd quarter where the Kings only scored 12 points.

It doesn't show in the box score, but the Kings were moving the ball a lot better. They only had 16 assists, but they also missed a lot of open shots that on a normal night probably would have gone in, but this was the 5th game in 6 nights and there were obviously some tired legs out there. The Kings also had 19 turnovers, and a lot of those seemed to be from rushing the pass and a lack of cohesion. The Kings have had pretty low turnovers most of the season, but that was because there was no ball movement from which to create a turnover. Tonight, I thought a few of the Kings turnovers were simply teammates being shocked that the ball was being given to them. I'm only half joking.

Another change from Westphal to Smart was a noticeable shift to play through the guards more instead of using the bigs to set up the halfcourt offense from the high post. There was still some of that, but not much, and for the most part the bigs were set up in the low post to attack the basket, which I liked, and DeMarcus especially seemed to respond well to it. Tyreke seemed a lot more energetic and aggressive, and he was also much better in fastbreak situations. The one fastbreak where he passed to Marcus, Marcus passed back to him, and then he fed it back to the trailing Hickson for the slam was a thing of beauty.

There are obviously still issues with this team that need to be addressed. The defense for most of the game was very bad, as the Bucks were shooting 60% for most of the game until they finally buckled down late. The offensive cohesion still needs some work. But I liked what I saw from this team late in the game. I don't envy Keith Smart right now, taking over a struggling team, with no training camp or pre-season to work with them, and very few practices and a bunch of road games coming up. He's off to a good start though and I look forward to seeing if this team can begin to harness their potential under his leadership.