SACRAMENTO -- It was supposed to be a track meet. Speed on speed. Youth against youth.
A sold-out, bipartisan crowd came out to watch the Kings and Los Angeles Lakers put on a show Saturday evening. Instead, they saw was a mistake-filled game with low shooting percentages and no flow.
LeBron James and his eclectic band of high draft picks and veteran castoffs moved to .500 on the season with their 101-86 win over the Kings. For one of the rare nights this season, Sacramento struggled to score and Los Angeles took advantage.
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SIGN UP HERE A night after winning a tough game against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Kings looked gassed and unfocused. They just returned from a 10-day road trip, and had to jump right back into a stretch of four games in six nights at home.
“Mental more than physical,” coach Dave Joerger said when asked if his team looked fatigued. “I think we’re definitely tired physically, but at one point it was like, five straight possessions of no pass into a pick-and-roll or one pass into a pick-and-oll and it was dribble, dribble, dribble.”
The Kings came into the night as one of the NBA’s premier passing teams, averaging 25.5 assists per night on the season. Against the Lakers, the ball movement ground to a halt. The Kings finished with a season-low 11 assists, plus 19 turnovers.
It’s hard to get assists when the ball isn’t going through the hoop. The Kings shot a season-low 34.8 percent from the field and 24 percent from behind the arc. They forced shots and didn’t make the extra pass, which is very different from the style of play we have seen through the first 12 games of the season.
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“Nobody’s trying to be selfish,” Joerger added. "They’re just young and it takes a while when they’re getting frustrated, and your nature has always been as the best player court no matter where you played at was, ‘I’ll just go get it.’ So we’re learning.”
Los Angeles came in with one of the worst defenses in the NBA, but the Lakers deserve at least some of the credit for the Kings’ subpar performance. They were quick to the ball and battled on the glass.
“You never know how the game is going to go, you just have to prepare your best for each and every game, come out and play hard, compete and really lock in on the defensive end,” Frank Mason said. “You never know if shots are going to fall or not, you’ve just got to play the game the right way, have fun and play as hard as you can.”
The Kings are saying the right things, and every club struggles with their shots on occasion. Through the first 12 games, Sacramento was making it look easy, shooting 49.1 percent from the field as a team and 39.3 from long range. Both of those percentages ranked third in the NBA overall.
“We just need to stay together, we need to play as a team more,” Nemanja Bjelica said. “I think tonight we just didn’t move the ball very well and we need to change that for the next game.”
Bjelica was very aware of who is next on the Kings’ schedule. If they play the way they did Saturday night against the Lakers, they’ll be in big trouble against the veteran San Antonio Spurs Monday evening at Golden 1 Center.
The Kings hope Saturday is a lesson learned. No player can do it one their own. If the team sticks to what’s worked early in the season - pushing the tempo and sharing the ball - they have a fighting chance against the Spurs.