this game was both not as close and as close as the final score indicates.

It is kind of hard to bitch about losing to the Spurs, even if we did have a legit shot at it before the 4th quarter lapse. It is all about the future, I’m generally the first to say so, although the present would be easier to stomach if the games were played on paper instead of on CSN. All that would mean is we’d have beaten Washington, and lost three times to Denver, instead of only once.

Or put another way, can this team become a good defensive team going forward with the guys we presume will be core guys? I think the answer could be yes, but how do the guys get to that point?

Otherwise I would change it to this:

If you’re building a castle and a band of marauders steals some lumber in the cold of night, you don’t throw your hands up and cry for mercy. You get some more coddamn lumber, and you assign a night watch, and you build that ufcking castle.

Perhaps this is premature, but is Kevin Martin worth the $10, $11, $12, million he’s due the next 3 years? He is a great 3rd guy on the team, but should not be considered the best or second best player on a team that is either good or wants to be good. I also don’t think his trade value will go up, so it’s probably as high as it’s going to be and if Dallas does want him and we’ll get back Josh Howard’s expiring contract, it may be worth taking a look?

I got ripped for suggesting we move him and J.T. to Utah in a sign and trade to get Boozer back. We have no consistent presence in the low post and although I’d like to believe J.T. will be a solid player in years to come, I don’t know if that will come to fruition?

There is also Kenny Thomas’ expiring contract to consider ($8.5 million). We could trade him for leverage to get a big back, but there aren’t too many bigs out there I’d want.

Or, we just sit tight and work on the chemistry and see how to get the most out of this roster in the hopes that the defense will improve and they will figure out how to co-exist and thrive together. Let’s see when Francisco comes back, who we want to keep at the 3 and who is expendable. Otherwise this is another lost year with a lottery pick. BTW, who would you pick, a SG or PF?

We’ve lost 15 of 17, OUCH!

First off: whatever your position is on Martin, it is absolutely ridiculous to suggest trading him for anything less than a young, talented big right now. And guess what – that trade ain’t out there without having to completely detroy the salary cap or giving away other very valuable pieces of this team. That is simply not happening…

To the game: aside from the brutal defense, it was pretty entertaining. The game is starting to slow down for Spencer as he is rarely rushing his offensive moves and is starting to understand where he thrives on the floor. I doubt that he will never become a dynamic rebounder, but if he learns to box out more consistently, he would become a much more complete player. He is definitely making solid progress though…

Defensively, they were awful, but it really looks as if PW is focusing almost all of his in game direction towards that end of the floor. He called at least 3 timeouts last night to immediately address a missed defensive assignment, which is exactly what he needs to do. Whatever hair Sergio had left was singed off when Westphal lit him on fire coming off the floor on the blown Hill play…

Lastly, that was an interesting DNP-CD for Beno last night. I know his ankle is bothering him and PW wanted to give him some rest, but usually, players love to go against their old teams and coaches love to let them. Totally from my gut and not some huge revelation, but I could really see Beno moved at the deadline along with K9…

but is it a problem of personnel or defensive strategy. Maybe PW has a great defensive scheme that just can’t be implemented by our big men. Maybe they need to double team more often and take the chances of the other team hitting their outside shots.
24-27 within 5 feet is a damn good percentage from down low. Could any team hit that many outside shots? Of course you would need to rebound their misses . . .

Until the Kings make a trade for a great interior defender ( and I have no idea about the likelihood of this happening) maybe clogging up the middle and giving teams open jump shots is lesser of the two defensive evils?

I’m completely ignoring the offense at this point because if the Kings defense improves at all we WILL start winning games.

I thought last night was a very entertaining game. I know everyone is bummed about losing another close game but the Kings lost to a team with Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobli. Both of those players are better than any player the Kings have atm. Also George Hill and Blair played out of their minds and still the Kings had a shot to win in the final 5 minutes.

We all know about the Kings’ defense. It’s terrible. I was a bit surprised that Udoka got as few minutes as he did because when he was out there he defended Hill and Ginobli fairly well. We all know Kevin and Sergio can’t guard worth a lick so having them on Hill and Ginobli is fairly worthless. With little interior defense, the Kings just couldn’t stop the precise SA offense.

I think that if the Kings can keep playing the way they did last night, they will beat any team that’s .500 or less.

As far as the Evans-Martin combo goes, I think they did fairly good for the first 3 quarters and then Evans took over and Martin choked up. I have always had my doubts about Martin being clutch in the fourth quarter. Throughout his career I think I can count his game winning shots on one hand. He just doesn’t have the “killer instinct.” Martin is a fantastic scorer but I think that in the fourth quarter the Kings need to put their best defenders on the floor. I would have rather seen Udoka in there instead of Martin and let Tyreke and Spencer run the offense.

Mustang and I caught the game last night and had a good time. The Kings traded blow for blow with the Spurs all night in front of 13,000 or so.

All of TZ’s points stand, but In my view the game was won at the FT line and by Dujuan Blair. 9 more made Fts on 9 more attempts, and another burly, scrappy non star PF, Blair this time, he of the 7.2 pts avg., looked like a Star attacking the basket against our front line.
What was dissappointing in Blair’s performance was how poorly Brockman played against him, a match-up we thought would be fairly even and entertaining and were eager to watch. This was not to be. Brockman was completely ineffective in his 15 minutes both as a defender and as a rebounder.
The Spurs whole scheme on both sides of the ball is to make the opponent as uncomfortable as possible, to break up any flow or rythm of any kind on offense or defense and then to exploit and attack through that ugliness which they are accustomed to. This makes even a high scoring affair like last night seem disjointed and uneven.
This type of play has the most effect on the more rythm dependant guys like Kevin Martin and yes, Richard Jefferson who just may not ever be the answer in their system.
Interior players, who are much less rythm dependant, often have opportunities to push through the confusion and score easy baskets in the paint – in which it seemed the Spurs were camped out in all night. I’d like to review the tape and see just how many uncalled 3 second violations there were. If I’m wrong on that, well, it just shows how confusing their sets can be to an opponent and to a viewer.

As to KM in the 4th, they got exactly what they wanted. Go view the tape of this game. Every (well, several) time Kevin hit a shot that seemed like he was developing a rythm, no matter what the score or situation, Pop called a time-out.
IMO Pop had decided that Reke was too young to worry about much, was determined that KM wouldn’t beat them and had designed most of his defensive plan to disrupt Kevin at key moments. Tyreke made him pay for that and Pop may reconsider next time or not, as they did win the game.
I have more – but gotta work!

has as much to do with Martin simply missing shots that he usually makes. The only game I can remember where he really played like the Kevin we know and love was the Utah game, the one game where the Speed Freke backcourt made sense. Am I just letting him off the hook too easy? I certainly don’t consider myself a Kevin Martin apologist, but couldn’t it really just be as simple as Martin being in a prolonged shooting slump that he’ll eventually shake off?

Of course, there could be several different reasons for the shooting slump, one of which may be an incompatibility with Tyreke as his PG. I just don’t see that as the case right now. I see a good shooter in a really bad shooting slump.