SACRAMENTO -- The Sacramento Kings finished 2015 with a whimper. The embarrassing stumble against the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night might come back to haunt this team down the line. It’s a loss, like 19 others the team has earned this season, but this one was completely avoidable.
It turns out that at least a few of the Kings player knew they stood a good chance to lose Wednesday night. Of course they didn’t inform the 17,314 fans that purchased tickets to see their team play the worst team in professional basketball. That would be an admission of their lack professionalism.
But following the game and then again at practice the next day, Kings players said they saw it coming. It started early in the day and it carried over into the 110-105 defeat.
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“Probably in shootaround,” point guard Rajon Rondo admitted following the game. “I don’t think we had great focus this morning.”
Veteran shooting guard Marco Belinelli, who played the last two seasons in San Antonio with the Spurs reiterated the same basic thought.
[HAM: The Kings Insider podcast: Episode 11 with Quincy Acy]
“Yesterday our shootaround was really bad,” Belinelli said following practice on Thursday. “I think that no one was focused on the game. Maybe it was because we were playing Philadelphia. That’s probably one of the reasons. But at the same time, I think you need to be professional.”
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If there was one player that showed up for the Kings, it was Belinelli. After struggling with his new team to start the year, the 29-year-old wing dropped in a season-high 28 points on 11-of-17 shooting and 3-for-6 from downtown. But even he missed a two of the Kings 16 clanks at the free throw line.
“I was so mad yesterday after the game, because we didn’t compete,” said an honest Belinelli. “We played soft, we didn’t run back on defense, we didn’t get rebounds.”
“We need to save our face and play hard every game,” Belinelli added. “It’s our job. We get paid a lot. So we need to go on the court, play hard every game for us and for our fans.”
For a team filled with veterans, no one stepped up and held the team accountable in shootaround and it bled right into the game. This isn’t a young team issue. There are plenty of would be leaders on this club. And they all saw it coming. Even rookie Willie Cauley-Stein can see the issue.
“I think that’s our problem,” Willie Cauley-Stein said when asked who is holding the team accountable. “We don’t have anybody that’s doing that. It’s hard to hold someone else accountable when you’re doing something wrong. So until you get your own stuff right, it’s hard to tell somebody else to get their stuff right.”
Head coach George Karl couldn’t contain his disdain for his team’s play following the game. In the span of six and half minutes, Karl called his team soft, said they lacked guts and were too cool and accused them of having “inconsistent intensity, inconsistent focus, inconsistent toughness and mental discipline.”
In most NBA circles, those are fightin words. But not in Sacramento. The players can’t get angry when Karl is just being honest.
The Kings are still trying to build a better culture, but they keep getting sidetracked along the way. Karl took over the Kings with 30 games remaining last season and despite the team’s 12-20 record, he sees positive change behind the scenes.
“This locker room is a hell of a lot better than it was last year,” Karl said. “This locker room has some leaders and some pros. They’re not happy, no one’s happy.”
No one is happy, yet they still can’t get on the same page and give a consistent effort. Maybe there are too many veterans in the locker room. Maybe they don’t want to step on each others toes. But something has to give.
Pretty shocking that a team with so much hope and so much potential is still working on something basic like showing up and focusing on a game against a team that came into town at 2-31.
Perhaps 2016 is the year the Kings get it together.