SACRAMENTO -- Not every game will be a track meet for the Kings.
Teams are trying to slow them down and force them into the half court. For 24 minutes, the Memphis Grizzlies were successful in this tactic Wednesday night at Golden 1 Center, but the Kings got a good stretch in during halftime and turned on the speed after the intermission.
The end result was a 97-92 victory for the upstart Kings. It was their second win in the team’s first five games and their first on their home floor.
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Here are two positives and two negatives from the Kings' shocker over the Grizzlies.
Positives
The student becomes the teacher
Every game is a new learning experience for De’Aaron Fox. He’s being tasked with leading a young group both on the floor and off in just his second NBA season.
NBA
So far, he looks up to the challenge.
Against a savvy veteran like Mike Conley Jr., Fox played to his strengths in the second half and helped lead his team to victory. He finished the night with 21 points, six assists and eight rebounds in 37 minutes of play.
Fox made some mistakes, which are expected. But he was the driving force behind the halftime turnaround for Sacramento. Conley finished with the better numbers, but Fox came out with the win, which in the end is all that matters.
Glass masters
The Kings have struggled to compete on the boards through the first four games of the season. Against Memphis, they held a narrow 25-24 advantage in the rebounding category before the half and then they started crashing the glass.
Nemanja Bjelica and Justin Jackson led the way with 11 rebounds each. The 11 rebounds for Jackson mark a new career high. Six of those boards came in the fourth quarter with the game still in doubt.
Willie Cauley-Stein chipped in 10 rebounds, with nine of those coming after halftime. Six players finished the night with six rebounds or more for the Kings, as they finished with a 57-49 advantage.
Negatives
Bench struggles
Marvin Bagley put up solid numbers again off of coach Dave Joerger’s bench, but the rest of the second unit struggled. The Grizzlies' reserves outscored the Kings' 33-20 for the game.
Yogi Ferrell went scoreless in 11 minutes of action, missing all five of his shots. Ben McLemore clanged two 3-pointers and finished scoreless as well. Frank Mason hit a couple of shots in limited action, and Harry Giles struggled with turnovers, playing just seven minutes in the win.
Outside of Bagley’s 13 points, the rest of the group combined to shoot 3 of 11 for just seven points. The starters played major minutes as Joerger went for the win against his former ballclub, but the team needs a more consistent effort from their bench.
Mistakes down the stretch
First compete, then figure out how to win. That was the mantra last season for Sacramento’s young group, and it will continue to be preached again this season.
The Kings did a nice job of hitting the Grizzlies with a 9-0 run to take an 89-80 lead with 4:35 remaining. Memphis is a veteran team and hung around, but a series of mistakes by Sacramento made the game much closer than necessary.
Fox shot just 3 of 8 from the free-throw line in the fourth, and as a teamm the Kings hit just 7 of 14 from the charity stripe in the final 12 minutes.
Sacramento also committed two unimaginable turnovers in the final minute, first with an eight-second call for not advancing the ball over the time line with 18.1 seconds remaining in the game. After a Conley 3-ball moments later, the Kings couldn’t inbound the ball and were called for a five-second violation with 14.3 seconds remaining.
Mistakes happen, but these two gaffes were egregious, and the Kings were lucky they didn’t come back to cost them the game.