I don't know if I can think of any other team that starts the game playing team basketball, sees it be successful, and then abruptly stops doing it in the middle of the game as many times as the Kings do.
Yeah, this has been a bizarre phenomenon -- usually when a team gets off to such a good start on both ends of the floor they have the ability to take a time out, regroup, and return to their tempo before the other team's run gets out of control. Instead we've seen this year's version of the Kings completely go away from what was working for an entire quarter or an entire half while guys just freelance and throw up terrible shots. It's hard to figure out which version of this Jekyll and Hyde team is for real.
Kings are 25-17 vs the West this year.
We're 0-7 vs the Pelicans and Rockets
We're 25-10 vs everybody else LOL.
That's some truly mind-blowing stuff. I'm not sure I recall a team with that sort of split vs an insanely hard conference, but we're somehow beating the better teams and just getting worked by 2 mid-tier teams?
I don't think it's just coincidence. Our Kings have a lot of guard depth and an All-NBA big man but they're extremely thin at the forward positions and both the Pelicans and Rockets are particularly flush with supreme athletes at the SG, SF, and PF positions who we just have no answers for.. Keegan Murray feels like the X-Factor for us, if he's struggling we're in trouble unless Fox goes supernova -- doubly so when going against a team with so many young forwards. Monte really needs to work on adding some better athletes at the SF and PF positions in the off-season.