Walton ‘frustrated,' smashes clipboard in Kings' ugly loss

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Luke Walton was not happy during the Kings' 140-121 loss to the New York Knicks on Thursday night.

With just over seven minutes left in the fourth quarter in Madison Square Garden, Knicks wing Alec Burks hit a 3-pointer to give New York a 121-101 lead.

Walton called a timeout and as an assistant coach tried to hand him a clipboard, the Kings' coach punched it, breaking it into two pieces.

Walton addressed the clipboard incident and what led to it.

"Look, I'm frustrated. We all should be frustrated," Walton told reporters in a video conference after the loss. "I don't know if I can say it's the most frustrated I've been. There's things where we make the same ... as a coach, there's only what you can do, you put a plan together, you work on things and communicate those things, so the frustration comes out at times because you're not out there, you can't hit people, you can't run up and down and get it out. Look, I was frustrated tonight and I believe in our team and I know when our group is playing well, we are much better than what we showed tonight. But I also know if we don't play with a certain type of, not just physical effort, but mental effort at this level, then it's going to be hard to win games.

"We've proven we can do it much better than we've done lately and that's where it gets frustrating. Again, that's the problem. That's where we're at. How do we live in the solution? How do we get better? And that's by diving in, working hard, sticking together and coming out and executing better."

The Kings now have lost nine straight games, dropping their record to 12-20. They were a game over .500 and had dreams of making the Western Conference play-in tournament when this skid started.

RELATED: Kings' second-half schedule any easier after tough first half?

There's still time for Walton and the Kings to turn things around, but they face a steep uphill climb to get back into contention for a playoff spot.

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