Hield is the only guy who looked good for us tonight. Barnes made a couple nice shots but they were forces that went in. I liked Corey Joseph's defensive fundamentals. I can't remember the last time a member of the Kings actually got down in a defensive stance! Seeing that shook me a little -- in a good way. Wanna take bets on how many games that lasts before all the confused looks which seem to say "this is Sacramento homie, we don't do that around here" shake him out of his old Popovich/Casey/McMillan habits?
But as regards Bagley, yeah I was sortof mixed on his play tonight. His energy and effort are obvious. He beats guys to the ball. He can also create good looks for himself but wasn't making enough of them tonight. He needs more counter-moves and he needs to slow down a little and stop rushing things, especially when he's already got his man beat and just needs to square up the basket and knock it down. These are young player mistakes though. I'm not going to fault him for going one-one-one when that's essentially what everyone in a Kings uniform was doing tonight. He's a skinny PF being asked to play C defensively and the results there have been about as expected but I can't fault him for the positional mismatch either. That's not his decision and he was competing out there despite being over matched physically. And in any case, I've long since learned to separate his performance from the guy we could have drafted instead. Yes I'm still mad about it
but we also can't undo it so I'm choosing not to look at it that way anymore.
