The Evaporation of Determination: Warriors 108, Kings 101

I think the frustration of watching this team is the predictable nature of their fourth quarter performance. I understand that the defenses tighten up, but clearly the Kings tighten up as well. There’s more pounding of the ball and less off ball movement – we end up seeing contested jump shot after turnover after contested jump shot.

This is more concerning than the Lakers or the Cavs’ games IMO – because it’s the Warriors fer chrissakes! There’s no need to go into a prevent offense against these guys.

And yes, I think Brockman should have gotten more run. I’d like to have seen him and Hawes get a look down the stretch.

I don’t expect this team to wow me every time out, and when I get “wowed” I take it as a double bonus type of thing. It’s not that I’m happy the team wins because I don’t expect it; it’s just that I know how difficult it is for a young team, even with talented players that the Kings DO have, to completely turn around a team in just one season.

If the Baby Royals don’t learn how to play hard with energy, effort, and execution (the 3 E’s we’ll call them—so clever isn’t it?) every night against every opponent, they’ll learn that getting your ass handed to by the dumpy Dubs is always possible. Watching Monta Ellis go off for 39 against you is understandable, but you have to make him earn it. It came very easy for Monta last night.

Amen on missing Kevin Martin, but I don’t think he’s the complete solution to all these problems. I wish he was, but he won’t solve the lack of people movement off the ball completely. There has to be a complete commitment to that, and since players have to learn how to do such things in the NBA environment, the learning curve is steep.

Baby Royals HOOOOOOOOO!

this team won 17 games last year. Yeah they’ve played well this year, but still, they won 17 games. If they win 30, that’s a huge improvement, and something to build on. Gotta look big picture.

Plus, add in Martin and Garcia coming back …… things will be just fine. Yeah, watching them stink up the 4th quarter sucks, but it’s better than watching them play like that for all 4 quarters, like we had to last year.

I think ‘Reke and Monta scorched each other all night. The difference was that the Warriors came up with a scheme to stop ’Reke with double and triple teams. Defensively, I don’t really recall our boyz helping or sagging in the paint to stop Monta’s drives (or anybody’s penetration all season for that matter). I would have liked to see someone else on the Dubs try to beat us. Maggette scored mostly from the stripe and Curry didn’t shoot enough to warrant a hot hand.

Who’s ‘Reke really going to pass to when nobody’s hitting their shots? Beno, Noc and Casspi could not find their range last night. Brocktimus played great as usual. Was there a reason Hawes didn’t play in the last 5 minutes? I felt he had a tremendous second half and didn’t play like he was proud of himself for being up 18 points. Eh, like Z said, we’ll be OK. We’ve said it all season long – we would have never competed every game like this last year. Go Kings.

when the Kings were a 50+ win team, players would step up. If Vlade or Peja missed a game, a guy like Hedo or Bobby Jackson or DC would go off. They were so talented they would compensate for a key players absence. No Peja? No problem, Doug Christie would go out and score 20+ instead of 12 points, and make key baskets in key moments, and we win.

With K-Mart out all season, we have needed a secondary and third scoring option. We have needed go-to players. Beno has been go-to. So as Omri. And Tyreke of course is at the top of the list. And we hovered near .500 as these guys filled these roles.

As I look up and down the roster, there are a couple of guys who logically would be expected to fill the role of main scoring option in the absence of our best player: Noccioni and JT. And both have let us down. They have let us down in crucial moments and most of the season. Our recent losing streak is not about ball movement, youth, nor inexperience. (Part of it, OK, but not the main culprit.) The losing we are seeing is about individual players not rising up and performing to the best of their ability. PW cannot and will not say this in a post game presser, and rightfully so. A coach can’t point fingers at individuals, and publicly say ‘you stink’. But this is the reality without Kevin.

The Grizzlies (19-16) and OKC (18-17) have records the Kings would like to have. They are not better because of more experience and less youth. They are better because individual players are stepping up, filling roles, and performing as a cohesive unit, as the best Kings teams did back in the day. More talent will see the Kings rise in the standings. Not more time.

Still, there’s only one thing I have to say about the 4th quarter.

Ball movement died last night and so did we. Sergio did not get more burn, which could have brought some of it back late in the game and Brockman could have been added to toughen up the defense…

Ultimately, PW stayed with the same line up cause he thought it was best, but it wasn’t working and he didn’t adjust. Evans was getting double and triple teamed, but he didn’t run plays that capitalized on that. In the past I have seen him call a time out and then immediately following Evans is passing out of these situations and making the other teams pay.

Overall the defense fizzled and collapsed almost completely. And everybody accepted that and let it happen. Evaporation of determination pretty much describes it. As does an acceptance of a losing situation without doing a damn thing to change it.

I thought we got past accepting losing, but last night shows we have not quite killed that beast completely.

now with garcia OR martin, i believe we would have easily finished off that game.
garcia and martin are prime finishers and they have proved themselves before

i have no idea why thompson was in the game late as he had nothing going offensively.
he had 3 TO’s….one on a point blank pass to a posting tyreke, one on a terrible crosscourt pass decision, and the late offensive foul

i would have taken any other big man in that game in crunch time except kenny thomas..
if there was ever a game for sean may to play in, this was the one.

may is not good at pretty much anything, but he can shoot the mid range jumper, which would have been a perfect fit when golden state rotated their whole defense towards evans, resulting in multiple kick out oppurtunities, and i think may would have hit them

nocionis multiple wide open misses also cost us dearly

the officiating wasnt that bad, except for the play when radmanovich purposely tried to foul hawes and they still didnt call it
what annoyed me was the warrior fans booing every time we got a call as if we were getting every call…..look at the box score idiots..u guys had 14 more FT’s than us.

“Tyreke Evans blows late in the fourth quarter.”

/runs for cover

Five turnovers and a shot clock violation, and no one hits a shot until 18secs. left in the game. I don’t think Martin could have saved this game. The Kings won the ORB by 9 and TR by 8, so I’m not sure Brockman helps in the 4th either since the shots we did take were missed 3’s with long rebounds. Maybe keeping Hawes in instead of subbing JT would have worked out better. Hawes had a couple of baskets, and 2 assists for Tyreke 3’s, but he was also blocked and had a turnover. So, not a bad sub really.

I read some posts about GS turning up the defense. Defense & GS in the same sentence is strange enough, turning it up is beyond my comprehension. The Kings lack of offense, doesn’t imply anyone needed to play defense. Yes, they double teamed, and we do too. But, when we double, the other team usually punishes us for it by getting the ball to the open man. That didn’t work for us because we don’t ever have someone trying to get open away from the ball, which is what a motion offense is all about.

The Kings have talented offensive players. The Kings do not have a talented offensive team. I mean, we run sets to get the ballhandler open. We don’t have a team that runs sets to get a player away from the ball open. So, when Tyreke or Beno have the ball, we run a screen, players head for the corners, and the player with the ball shots or passes into the corner.

What we don’t see is players without the ball running off of screens trying to lose their man. Or, wings cutting into the paint to screen off a bigs man to create a mismatch in the paint when their man has to switch. We don’t run plays for our Bigs at all. We give the ball to them to create. We may feed them if their man leaves to double, but we only run plays for the man with the ball.

So, when our shooters go cold, we’ve got no offense sets to create open shots for our bigs, or for players cutting to the basket. Plays that can create high percentage shots or fouls. It’s called an offensive scheme, and PW hasn’t had time to implement one yet. We run great plays coming out of timeouts, but during the game the PG and the players have to know what they’re trying to do, and implement it on their own. And, tha’ts not going to happen this early in the career of so many young players. Soon, but not yet.

So, no need to point fingers, I’m sure the players are doing enough soul searching on their own. Right now, we are who we thought we would be. So, don’t read too much into some early successes. By the end of the year, we’re going to win more of our share of games against equal & lesser talented teams. And, hopefully we surprise one more Western Conference leader.

I bet Omri, JT & Tyreke don’t have a game like this again, this week. Go Kings

embarrassing to not be able to score 50 in a half on those guys.

We will definitely be ok when Martin comes back!

Just a quick note:

Remember what Tim Donaghy said about Dick Bavetta in his book? How he likes to keep games close and not let any team keep a big lead? Well how about 19 Kings free throw attempts in the first half and only 6 in the second? Kings were called for twice as many fouls in the second half then in the first??

Food for thought.