That the referees counted Michael Finley's three good without the benefit of replay ... that's perfect. It seemed like a joke when the refs moved on with the game, and Randy Brown had to tell Andres Nocioni to go to the huddle. When Shareef Abdur-Rahim asked Danny Crawford, "That was late. Watch the replay." "We can't," Crawford replied. "Oh," said Abdur-Rahim. I mean, it seemed like everyone was like -- "Ok, joke's over, review it and reverse it." Like Crawford would keep a straight face walking up to Kenny Natt ... and then pull out a gun with daisies coming out of the barrel. "HA! HA! You shoulda seen the look on your face! Of course we'll review it."

Sadly, as has been the case this entire season, that was no joke.

For those that missed it, game tied at 92. S.A. ball, roughly 2.5 seconds separate the game and shot clocks. Sacramento's defense stifles Tony Parker's penetration (a true rarity), and T.P. kicks out to Michael Finley with one tick left on the shot clock. Finley rises ... the shot clock goes off ... Finley fires, in. Crawford, the nearest referee, is watching Finley's feet. He counts it good. The other two refs don't dispute it. Review shows the shot clock expired by at least a half-second. No matter, as a shot clock play isn't reviewable by the refs. The Kings get the ball with 1.3 seconds, and Nocioni airballs the wing three.

It's a sad story only made brighter by the fact that ...

... the Kings will have the most ping pong balls on May 19.

No sleep til the No. 1 pick.

I can't believe what I saw. A complete embarrassment. An absolute slap-in-the-face to thousands of good, hard-working folks everywhere. A horror show.

Clippers fans ... got a WAVE going ... in the second quarter.

I am as shocked as you are.

...

...

Despite the piss-poor performance by the Kings, there are no real individual scapegoats. No one completely dogged it. Bad decisions, bad shots ... sure. But no one really dogged it out there, save a few first-half minutes of Rashad McCants. Francisco Garcia got down early and pulled a Hawes, Spencer Hawes continued to rebound but basically gave up on defense once the margin grew to 30. Andres Nocioni's whistle complaints weren't too vociferous.

I think the greatest crime (besides that awful wave) was the possession to end the first quarter. If I'm remembering correctly, the Kings had 20 seconds to get the right shot. It ended with Nocioni passing it to Beno from the right corner to the right wing, and Beno having two ticks to get off a contested three. There was no ball movement, no attempt of creating a mismatch or advantage, no ... anything. It was awful.

How did the coaching staff respond? Randy Brown got off the bench and waved his arms in that motion that indicates the request for moving the ball and moving off the ball. Coach Brown seemed pretty perturbed. Kenny Natt? He did that exasperated look he does a dozen a times a game. Like he's personally affronted the team had such a bad possession. I would be too! But the team, of course, either didn't understand the reason for the exasperation, or it didn't care. Because the ball movement never got better. No one moved off the ball. Nothing happened.

All this business about playing to the level of the opponent, getting up for better teams ... it's really absurd. You suck because you can't beat anyone. You have a talent deficit. If you don't play your best you will lose against even the worst teams. The team renounced all its recent success by refusing to even try to mimic that. And everyone's at fault for that, even if no one explicitly dogged it.

This team needs a strong leader somewhere, whether on the bench or the floor. This crap can't happen next season.

Let's get this out of the way first ...

The second half of the season, believe it or not, has featured some of the most encouraging losses I've ever experienced as a Kings fan. Perhaps that's to be expected from a young team; I've never been in this situation, though. Even in the later portion of the 1990s dry spell the team wasn't so saturated with youth. Arguably, the team's two best players with Kevin Martin injured are a 22-year-old rookie and a 20-year-old sophomore. (Francisco Garcia's the only other guy in the conversation.) That's a Shock to the system, even if it's what we've wanted since 2005.

The Lakers game Tuesday fell apart in the third quarter, and this one did roughly the same, with Houston rattling off a 19-2 beginning with three minutes left in the third. There's just not enough firepower, or enough defense, to hold a great team down for longer than a half of a game or so. Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes went nuts in the first half ... but you can't exactly expect them to put up 30/15, right? Likewise, Hawes isn't the right guy to shut out Yao Ming, the best center in the West. Maybe someday, when Yao's old and Hawes is benching Volkswagens. But not now.

And I'm cool with that, and I'm not stressing about the losses, even though I'd like to see at least one more win. I think, though, the growth of Shock & Hawes this past month has reiterated that we have been in the right in criticizing Kenny Natt for strapping Donté Greene to the bench. You can only learn so much in practice, or from watching tape. You need to be out on the floor against NBA players. Shareef and Coachie can teach Thompson every move in the book. But standing across from Luis Scola and doing it will get you to your peak. Experience can't be substituted.

Look at Francisco Garcia. Remember the Cisco Play of the Game -- the one stunningly bad play Flaco would make every single game? He might take a silly shot now and then, but he's not making those mistakes. He's grown up as a player. And he's finishing his fourth season! Start the process earlier, let Greene grow into his NBA identity, and figure out how good he'll be.

It's disappointing that it took this long to get Greene solid rotation minutes. (And who knows, maybe he'll be back on the bench tonight in L.A.) You can't rely on encouraging losses forever; at some point, surprise double-doubles will become expected double-doubles. You can't afford to learn-on-the-fly when winning is the only objective, and that day will come sooner than you think. Two of the kids are getting a legit opportunity to learn. It's unfortunate the third had to wait so long.

More photos » by Matt York - AP

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The Kings beat Phoenix last week. They lost badly on Friday. As the Kings have the worst record in the league, and as the Suns are in playoff contention in a great Western Conference, this should not be particularly surprising.

Friday's loss, realistically, should be the norm. I mean, that the Kings held on for three quarters is a minor upset.

Mix in the lack of your best player, and ... this was no surprise.

Beno Udrih, for some reason, can't figure out why things went wrong.

"I really don't know what to say. ... I don't know how we can play three games good and then one game just play bad. I don't know. I really don't know. I don't know what to say, seriously."

Again, Kevin Martin didn't play Friday. He's the team best player by a wide margin. Set aside the TI-50. It's pretty easy to figure out the biggest reason for the team's demise.

But if you'd like another reason, I'll submit that (ahem) Beno Udrih himself is a big reason the Kings offense underperformed in Round 2.

Last week against Phoenix, Beno was aggressive, taking 10 FGAs and 5 FTAs in 32 minutes. Steve Nash ain't no cheese grater -- you can beat him like a drum, provided you have a pulse and two legs.

Friday night, Beno took five FGAs and two FTAs in 28 minutes. No pulse. No drum-beating.

You have to exploit mismatches in this league. Phoenix exploited Beno's bad defense, with Nash taking more shots than any other Sun. The Kings, instead, went straight at Phoenix's best defenders. Unfortunately, because Martin is injured, this is a necessity. With options limited, the Kings have rely on whoever has a pulse that given night, and whoever is feeling it. Francisco Garcia and Rashad McCants were feeling it. (Note: McCants is always feeling it.)

Why did the Kings play worse Friday than in the last three games? Beno wasn't aggressive. Martin is injured. Phoenix made their open threes, in part because Phoenix has a lot of good shooters and in part because the Sacramento defense is beyond disorganized. Maybe it's hard to see when you're right there in the trenches. Maybe Beno drank the Kool-Aid from three straight competitive games and assumed this team became good overnight.

This team did not become good overnight. There are serious defensive deficiencies from toe to top, the point guard vascillates between feisty on comatose, defensive rebounding is a major problem, about six of the top seven contributors have been largely inconsistent and the coach make adjustments as frequently as McCants makes passes. This isn't that difficult to understand.

More photos » by Ben Margot - AP

Sacramento Kings' Jason Thompson reacts to a funky smell during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Golden State Warriors Wednesday, April 1, 2009, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

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In a realist sense, no game means anything for the Kings. Whether the Kings end up as the worst or second-worst team in the league is more a matter of fate than results at this point -- teams win close games, and they lose close games. The Kings have been in several close games of late, and you figure Washington has a few left in them, too. It's not about quality at this point: the Kings and Wizards (and toss the Grizzlies in too) are all awful, almost equally awful. The largest share of ping pong balls will essentially be decided randomly, with an edge to Sacramento.

But this game served as much of a microcosm as Tuesday's loss to New Orleans. To wit:

* No defense. At all. Attempts at defense, sure, most notably in the form of Jason Thompson, Andres Nocioni, Francisco Garcia, and a couple times Kevin Martin. I mean, the Warriors scored 143 points on about 123 possessions. The overtime session and naturally high speed of the Golden State offense didn't inflate things much. BAD defense. I don't know who you replace to fix it -- Monta Ellis went ballistic, and Kelenna Azubuike was rather insane. The switch-on-every-pick strategy is a disaster; I love J.T., but I really don't enjoy watching him cover Ellis on the perimeter. BAD IDEA.

* The failure of small ball. A few defensive rebounds in the last half-quarter would have been helpful. Hawes, who finished the game with one foul, played 21 minutes. He had a couple of bad turnovers, he had trouble finishing in the lane inexplicably. But he's basically one of your three or four best players. STOP PLAYING INTO THE OPPONENT'S GAME PLAN! I mean Hell, the guy hit three threes (in three attempts) in the first half ...

* Borderline stupid late-game execution. The last two minutes of overtime ... I want to erase it from my memory forever.

* KEVIN F---ING MARTIN. Good God Almighty. Fifty points with a True Shooting percentage of 74%. Offense at the two-guard spot is ... not a problem.

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Bad teams must keep short memories. But management needs to understand the problems here, as they pop up again and again, like demonic moles dodging every whack attempt. This hammer ain't working, bub. Time for another.

Watching Beno Udrih carve up ARCO Arena like a bar of cedar put things in a good bit of perspective: of course bad offenses routinely destroy the Kings defense. When your point guard can't stop a leaky faucet, you have no chance to prevent the flood. Beno can't stop the leak, but Steve Nash might actually be a worse first line of defense.

It almost looked as if someone told Beno at halftime, "Hey, that guy is as slow and soft as you. Beat him." Because Beno beat him. Into dust. Repeatedly. Sure, Nash did the same at the other end. But Sacramento already had the advantage, Kenny Natt went with some sort of instinct and actually stayed big late in the fourth quarter (with Spencer Hawes and Jason Thompson sharing the court) and the Kings held on.

The national interest in this story will be from the angle that the Suns choked an easy win up at the worst possible moment. (Heck, that might even be the local angle. Or we'll be asked where this effort has been all year. Fair question, sure.) But the Kings did go out and win this one. They took it from Phoenix. Shaq rolled, and Spencer never for a split second backed down. Nash rolled, and Beno never for a split second backed down. Francisco Garcia pushed hard, Kevin Martin pushed ... every King who played went after it. The gym, while boisterous, was far FAR far from full. But doesn't it seem like every time the gym's excited (save Boston), the Kings turn out better effort? Is the bad attendance feeding into a self-fulfilling doom?

But whatever, that doesn't matter right now. For the second time in 10 days, the Kings went out and beat the opponent. That's worth a night of smiles.

There is no other way to explain a 28-point win on the road by this team.

Wait! yes there is. There's some talent here. Maybe 3/5th of a (hold your breath) good starting line-up. Said 3/5th -- Kevin Martin with 30 points on 22 shooting possessions, Jason Thompson with 18 points and 12 rebounds, and Spencer Freaking Hawes with 18 points (on 13 FGAs), 13 rebounds, five assists, only one turnover, and a game-high +36.

Haute.

Bravo to Beno Udrih and Francisco Garcia as well. All-out hellfire.

Smiley faces. Come on! You can do it! Put a smile on your face ...

[A]gain, Kings interim coach Kenny Natt discussed the difficulties of having an offensive-minded center who loses his way defensively if he doesn't score early on.

"I know he can play better," Natt said. "We have to find a way to get him off to a good start (offensively). That is normally when he has a good game. That's the key and the focus in dealing with him.

This is known as Bizarro Thinking. It is when someone expresses an opinion that is not only sensible, but it the opposite of sensible.

Sensible thinking: if you're an offensive-minded center and your offense is borked, you had better contribute something else. Like defense. Or rebounding. Or ... I don't know, a general sense of hustle?

Bizarro Thinking: the key in dealing with an offensive-minded center is to make sure he gets a ton of shots early, so that he will be able to pull himself together and, um, compete on the defensive end and on the glass.

It's like having Amare Stoudemire without the Amare Stoudemire. A player who has averaged 28/8 and been named All-NBA first team ... maybe he can get away with this. A second-year player who didn't make the rookie or sophomore All-Star teams? You need to earn your keep, no matter how funky the offense looks.

The only reason to watch this game from the tip was to watch the young bigs. Jason Thompson gave us something to watch. Donté Greene, bricks and all, gave us something to watch (as well as four more defensive rebounds than Hawes' zero in just one extra minute). Hawes ... he gave us nothing positive. Not a thing.

With Hawes' brain, hands, size and talent, he should have a rebound every five minutes. His career average to date exceeds that -- I'm not asking for the Moon. Last night: 25 minutes, zero rebounds ... while Charlotte simply attacked the glass on every miss.

The young players need to earn their keep every night. You can't take over the league in fits and starts. You need to put up.