Playing Ketchup

All technical factors have their role obviously.. but imo the most important thing is mentality, psychology. Most of the players seem unmotivated, almost bored.

Only Martin was seriously trying, hustling, fighting for every shot, during the whole game. Hawes and Thompson were somewhere in between. Udrih was alive only offensively. And Cisco… I loved him. he brought so much energy. I think he was the basic factor of the come back.

If Pete Carril is Natt’s offensive coordinator … does he need a defensive coordinator too?

The offense under Carril’s system has been solid against Utah and OKC. If Natt isn’t covering the offense, and he needs someone to help him with the defense, um, how to put this delicately…why is he our f*cking head coach?

“pass the ball better”…sounds like the philosophy of the successful Kings under Adelman. might not work with this group of players.

i don’t think it is only the players individual efforts that needs to be questioned. they often look like they are trying out there, but the defensive scheme seems so faulted that the players are almost always lost. they look like they’re trying but at the same time they look confused. there are often times when you’ll see 3 kings on a perimeter player (and not even a star player)—do we need to triple team someone who’s taking a long 2? so opposing offenses realize you just have to keep passing the ball till you find the open 3-pt shooter.

maybe the Kings rely on the zone too much because of the deficiencies in our post players to defend the paint. the perimter defenders always drop down to help out and then someone above the 3-pt line is going to be open.

I was blown away by Natt’s comments regarding defense. All he has to do to answer that question is say the same things every other coach says, desire, staying with shooters, rebounding, blah, blah, blah.

Instead he goes off like a politician on the campaign trail saying whatever he wants to say regardless of the question. If there was more to that conversation, the TV people made Natt look like a total idiot. If there wasn’t, either Natt misunderstood or…who knows, but the answer was ridiculous.

Its hard to imagine any professional coach couldn’t see our biggest problem right now is defense. Watch us sometime and see how many possessions go by where the other team runs their stuff with only the vaguest sense of disruption by our guys. It really seems like 3 of 4 times down the floor at least the other team gets a quality shot out of their offense.

I try really, really hard to make slow judgements when it comes to coaches. We see so little of what actually goes on, but I’m having a difficult time reserving judgment on Coach Natt. Between the indifferent effort at times and the lack of any indentifiable defensive scheme, philosophy or growth its hard to like Coach Natt right now.

(ok – one helper, dude’s old)

The rest of the staff should be working on Defense. Isn’t Natt a Sloan protege? Shouldn’t he KNOW how to coach D?

Shouldn’t he KNOW that if he can get them to play team D he might have a job next year?

Natt’s concerned with quick poor shots & poor ball handling leading to easy fast break points. Maybe it’s not a matter of not wanting to improve the defensive scheme, but that the defensive scheme isn’t enough to overcome the easy point that the KIngs give up because the offense is taking bad shoots and people aren’t in position to get back on defense. You can only work on so much at one time, so fix what you think is the easiest to fix first.

As to the defensive scheme, the last two games it seems that the bigs are playing the pick & roll better. They’re jumping out to slow the man with the ball and allow his man to get back into position to defend. A couple of times the bigs man has gotten to the basket, but overall they’re playing it better. Help defense still is poor, and everyone is to blame on that. Still when Salmons, Cisco, BJax & Spencer are the only players capable of good defense, you have to wonder is it talent or coaching?

TZ, while I agree with your points on defense, when you argue a trade for one of the worst defenders at his position a few days earlier then the point is moot. I apologize if this comes off as too offensive, but I just feel you’re taking the two opposing arguments in this case.

The Kings didn’t lose this game because of bad passing, as TZ noted, they lost because of defense. I turned the game off at halftime because I was tired and pissed and yelling at the television and I had to get dinner for the wife’s bday. But I was yelling about two things:

How many times did a point or two guard or forward or Thunder offensive player just walk the ball up the court and either a) get a layup with 4 purple jerseys around him or b) take a nice 7-10 footer? without ever being checked by a defender? This I blame mainly on Beno(and whatever ghost we had a point guard when he wasn’t in the game) and Martin(Injury noted, but I’m losing confidence in our boy quickly as I watch everyone just take him straight on and score at will).

On offense there were multiple times when JT(mainly, but sometimes other players) got the ball down low and instead of isolating him and drawing the defenders away I remember at least three plays(one with Garcia stands out in my head) were our offensive player literally just brought his defensive player over to the ball-action, and inadvertently created a double team that wouldn’t have existed without our guy’s movements. This is just bad basketball, and it lasted all half. We’re lucky to have lost by two, because we didn’t even deserve that sense of satisfaction at the half. Down 20 to OKC? We’re gonna lose by 70 this year, yet.

For the first few weeks Natt took over, he mostly tried to implement the existing offensive and defensive plays…which continued not to work. Over the last few weeks (with Coachie’s help) he has minimized the complexity of the offense and trimmed it back down to basics. This team continues to struggle, even with the simplified offensive scheme now being used. Things like floor spacing, passing and screens are something the Kings are still struggling with. If this team is having this much difficulty executing basic offensive plays, then executing a team defensive strategy is something far off in the future.

The Kings badly need floor leadership and quality, experienced coaching.