Middle of Nowhere: Hawks 108, Kings 97

It’s the lack of interior defense.

is jason thompson not 6’11" and a “superior athlete?” what’s his excuse? why does westphal have him on scholarship while spence plays well and still only gets 12 minutes (with 4 assists to jt’s zero)? who was really in the game for most of that layup drill? anybody seen donte greene lately?

can someone please tell jt that there is no rule that one must brainlessly power-dribble into the chest of the nearest defender upon receiving a pass 10 feet from the basket? if you can hit a 17 foot jumper you can hit a 10 foot jumper.

a disturbing trend I am noticing with tyreke.. when he is leading the break, 2 on 1 , 3 on 1, 3 on 2, his play is almost always to fake the pass and take it himself. now this often results in baskets and/or getting fouled (which is an inferior outcome to a dunk/layup for a teammate). there is a potential for this to cause problems. I have seen frustration in omri, for one, when he runs the wing, hard, and NEVER gets the pass. I don’t think I am imagining this. I hope that tyreke is our lead guard for a long time and that he realizes that a layup for a teammate is a better play than 2 fts for him.

and I love jon brockman but if he’s your starting center you are a bad, bad team. which right now, we are. I think this current record is what we expected preseason, but damn this team for getting my hopes up and making me care.

So statistically, Kenny Thomas > Andres Nocioni?

Maybe if he’d learn what team offense is, he’d play more. Right now he’s the Argentinean Maurice Taylor.

Sometimes it is fun to watch his combinations, sometimes I think he can be a bit too creative.

and why would you play a rookie ahead of your 2nd and 3rd year guys, who performed well at the end of last season?

My impression, is that PW has a mandate from the FO & the Maloofs to improve defense and he’s searching to find a group of defenders to win him some games. Unfortunately, they’re all too young and inexperienced and so it’s not working.

Right now there are players that have the skill to play very good defense but not consistently. But, the team as a whole plays terrible team defense. I believe, and I’ve said this before, but incase you haven’t read my posts before, the Rotations need to be more stable so that the players can learn to defend as a group. Know the defensive sets for one position, and learn to trust the other players know their defensive responsibilities. They need to learn to work together and have confidence in each other.

When half your players come in to the game and have to play a different position every game and have to know all the switches, double teams, help assignments, and everything related to team defense at each position, Mistakes will happen.

Add to that the fact that the best bigs are too inexperienced to be good interior defenders, and you end up with PW searching for something that isn’t going to be there for a coupel more years.

than the coach trying to find five guys who will give him consistant effort on both sides of the floor. Noc is not getting many minutes because when he is on the floor he is jacking up ill-advised threes and not getting it done on defense. Ormri seems so desperate to put up big numbers on offense that he doesn’t focus on team defense. PW moves Hawes in and out because he is looking for some center who can play defense in the paint. I think the only reason JT is getting more minutes is because he’s the only tru PF we have. The rest of the big men are either too short or too slow. It has to be just as frustrating for him to see lay up after lay up with nobody even trying to slow them down. While House Money had a block, he was not a presence in the middle.

You look at how the defense closes up the paint when Evans drives or when JT or Hawes tries to take it to the hoop, and you wonder why we can’t manage to do the same.

No turnovers in the first quarter. Progress.

While the Kings need to improve in many areas, the Hawks are just a damn good team.

I thought we played a decent game, and so did the Hawks, they’re just “double-digits on the road” better than us. The main thing I’m not happy with from this game is Brockman’s production, but hopefully we’ll get a few more games with this same starting lineup to really get a sense of what this unit can do, because I think it could be good.

is a #3 overall pick that has had several years to develop. If you haven’t noticed, we’ve only had one pick close to that and overall we’re pretty happy with how that one turned out, no?

We need help in the middle, but I don’t see the problem with this song for the rest of the year. We’re not winning the title this year, we need more assets. Let’s see what the trade deadline, draft and the summer brings, but if GP is making major deals to address the song for this year, he’s the worst GM in the league. Which we knows he’s not.

We start a front court with a 3rd year center and a 2nd year PF, and either a rookie of 2nd year SF. That’s a total of 6-7 years experience total. Most teams have Unis older than that. The average years of experience on most playoff teams is 8 years per man.

The Kings are a top 10 rebounding teams and a top 10 scoring team, but we’re one of the worst defensive teams in the league, and blaming that on 2 players is just silly. It’s not JT’s fault when 3 players leave their man to double and help JT. That’s just poor decision making or poor training by the coaching staff. When Spencer leaves his man to stop the ball because one of our guards got beat, and no one helps out on Spencer’s man, that’s not Spencers fault.

Last time I looked, basketball was a team game, and I believe that they’re are more team mistakes on offense & defense that need correcting.

has smoked a lot of guys this year. Instant offense.

Because in the 1st half Crawford didn’t do anything extraordinary I saw.

When hot, Jamal Crawford can smoke ANY defender in the league let alone an average defender like Kevin. That being said, K-Mart put up a good offensive effort and that’s all you can do against an opponant on fire.

Jamal 20/2/4
K-Mart 23/4/5

If every Kings player got so badly “smoked” by his opponent, the Kings would have won the game.

He was signed by the Wizards in 1996 after he graduated from college.