{"id":36948,"date":"2023-12-29T19:21:07","date_gmt":"2023-12-30T03:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kingsherald.com\/?p=36948"},"modified":"2024-04-28T10:41:04","modified_gmt":"2024-04-28T17:41:04","slug":"kings-117-hawks-110-swipa-the-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingsherald.com\/articles\/kings-117-hawks-110-swipa-the-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Kings 117, Hawks 110: Swipa The Game"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sacramento Kings followed up their mostly-atrocious game against the Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> on Wednesday night with a first-half performance against the Atlanta Hawks that sits among the worst halves of basketball I have ever seen the Beam Team play.<\/p>\n

We’ll start… with the starters. Harrison Barnes and Kevin Huerter played just 5 first-half minutes each, and it was all bad. When Mike Brown subbed them out in the first quarter, neither returned until the 2nd half. Domantas Sabonis and Keegan Murray were both -30s in the first half alone. And when De’Aaron Fox’s teammates have struggled this season, Swipa has often played well enough to carry his team and keep them in games, but even Fox was limited to just 5 first-half points against the Hawks tonight.<\/p>\n

What was a dominant NBA offense last season looked awful<\/em> here. They could not hit a three despite shooting many<\/a>, and only got to the free throw line 6 times \u2013 a terrible combination for scoring success.<\/p>\n

The Kings did<\/em> start to turn this game around a bit when the bench unit subbed in. Malik Monk and Trey Lyles combined for a nice scoring run that would eventually close the established Hawks lead to 6. I’ll talk more about this strong night for the bench unit later on, but I think it’s interesting to mention here that Davion Mitchell got the Keon Ellis backup point guard minutes and Alex Len got the JaVale McGee backup center minutes. I’ll be curious to hear Mike Brown talk about those decisions.<\/p>\n

Alright, back to it: Once Quin Snyder’s starters returned, the game collapsed on Sacramento yet again, and Atlanta took a dominant 71-53 lead into the half. No answers or physicality on defense with hot shooting on the Atlanta side, and no offense to fall back on.<\/p>\n

The Kings spent the 2nd half chipping away at the Hawks lead with some improved offense and much better effort and shooting luck defensively. The Hawks went cold, Fox got going, and it was just a matter of if<\/em> the Kings would have enough time and energy to actually overtake the lead. It was both an encouraging and frustrating 2nd half because if Sacramento hand’t dug themselves such a whole to open this game they’d have likely cruised to victory.<\/p>\n

Instead, the Kings had to scratch and crawl their way back into this game while conserving enough energy to push for the win in crunch time. The good news? That is exactly what they did.<\/p>\n

Fox scored 26 of his 31 points in the 2nd half and was the best player on the court for either team. Trey Lyles continued his hot shooting and finished with 19 points. Sacramento doesn’t win this game without Lyles, and that has to feel good for him. It had been a while since the Kings felt his positive impact on a game this much.<\/p>\n

His stat line won’t impress you, but I’ve got to give a little shout out to Chris Duarte here, too. Kevin Huerter would eventually leave the game with a hand injury, so Brown went with Duarte to close this one out. It wasn’t a perfect night for him by any means, but he gave the squad some defensive energy and hit what may have been the biggest basket of the game \u2013 a three pointer with 3:27 remaining and the score tied at 110-110 to give the Kings a 113-110 lead they never fumbled back to the Hawks. Duarte’s three provided just enough separation to get the job done.<\/p>\n

I don’t feel great about it, but a win is a win? The Kings had to do some soul searching at the half, and whatever they did worked well enough to secure the victory, but they’ve got some issues here, particularly in that starting lineup. They simply need more consistent contributions from Harrison Barnes and Kevin Huerter. Until they get it, the starting lineup is vulnerable to performances like we saw in the first half tonight. Murray hasn’t been\u00a0much\u00a0<\/em>better offensively, but at least Mike Brown knows he’s getting consistently strong defense out of Keegan every night. You can’t say that for Barnes and Huerter.<\/p>\n

Next up: The Grizzlies in Memphis on 12\/31.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sacramento Kings followed up their mostly-atrocious game against the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday night with a first-half performance against the Atlanta Hawks that sits among the worst halves of basketball I have ever seen the Beam Team play. We’ll start… with the starters. Harrison Barnes and Kevin Huerter played just 5 first-half minutes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":36952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,24],"tags":[59,335,862,929,32,777,1391,5177,4725],"coauthors":[308],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKings 117, Hawks 110: Swipa The Game - The Kings Herald<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/kingsherald.com\/articles\/kings-117-hawks-110-swipa-the-game\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kings 117, Hawks 110: Swipa The Game - The Kings Herald\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Sacramento Kings followed up their mostly-atrocious game against the Portland Trail Blazers on Wednesday night with a first-half performance against the Atlanta Hawks that sits among the worst halves of basketball I have ever seen the Beam Team play. 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