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Kings 98, Bulls 108: At Least We Know Our Weaknesses

By | 0 Comments | Feb 18, 2019

Perhaps the most glaring weakness tonight was the lack of transition defense. The Bulls scored 33 points on the fast break, almost a third of their entire point total. A lot of this lay in the fact that we just didn't get back, or we gambled at inopportune times. Our halfcourt defense so far this year has actually been rather impressive, but the transition D has been putrid, and it really hurts our ability to get anything going on the other end as well, since easy buckets for the other team on one end early in the shot clock allows them to concentrate more on defense, which hurts our chances of scoring easily.

The other obvious weakness was our Free Throw shooting, a lowly 58.8% from the line despite getting 34 attempts. It's a bit odd as well since typically good Free Throw shooters are missing these shots. Tyreke Evans was the biggest culprit, hitting only 5-12. Marcus Thornton also missed both his attempts. Both those guys typically hit 75-80% of their shots. I don't foresee this being a long term problem, but it is frustrating.

Even with all that the Kings still had chances to win this game, but Chicago showed just why they are one of the best teams in the league, answering every Kings run with one of their own. The team got closest in the 3rd quarter when they cut the lead to only one point, but several bad decisions, both in shot selection and defensive lapses, and the Bulls were back up by 10 in a moments notice.

This is still a learning process, and I implore fans to be patient. This team is still trying to learn how to play together, and they're trying to do it all on the fly thanks to the lockout. Normally a team has a summer league for the young guys, a month of free agency, a few weeks of training camp, and a month or so of pre-season games. This year, that all takes place in just two weeks (and no summer league). It's kind of insane when you think about it, especially since the team is trying to play a new brand of basketball and is using so many new players in the rotation

New York comes in on Saturday. With a high octane offense that likes to get out and run, this will be a good test to see if the Kings have learned anything from their mistakes.

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