[Game] [01/82] Kings @ Suns, 10/22/2025 7pm Pacific 10pm Eastern

The terrifying thing is what does this team look like defensively regardless? Sometimes a team indeed gets out what it puts in.
I’ll say that the defense honestly didn’t look too bad aside from that third quarter meltdown but the lack of rebounding just sorta snowballed, which will generally happen when you’re missing the best rebounder in the league and your starting forward.
 
Yeah, I’d imagine Cardwell is probably going to get the IJ/Keon mid-season main roster call-up slot this season (hopefully in place of Saric). Doug obviously trusts him, seeing as how he wound up playing most of the 4th quarter in lieu of Devin “Skyhook” Eubanks.

The only downside is he missed his first free throw completely off the left side of the rim and then swooshed the one he was supposed to intentionally miss
 
I’ll say that the defense honestly didn’t look too bad aside from that third quarter meltdown but the lack of rebounding just sorta snowballed, which will generally happen when you’re missing the best rebounder in the league and your starting forward.

The guard defense outside of some plays here and there from LaVine and Schroder was horrendous but yeah, the ball just bounced right to the Suns on some plays.
 
We’ve seen weird stuff happen on opening nights for years though. I mean, the Jazz just curbstomped the Clippers by thirty points.
Wow i guess the Jazz are gonna do that thing where they surprise everyone the first 10-15 games before yanking their best players out of the lineup and completely sucking again. I don’t love what the Kings are doing, but anything is better than this mess in Utah. Tanking has gotten them nowhere
 
The guard defense outside of some plays here and there from LaVine and Schroder was horrendous but yeah, the ball just bounced right to the Suns on some plays.
Yea, people were speaking as if this Kings team was a 25 win team anyhow, so they certainly can’t be missing two starters and their best two rebounders and expect to dominate the glass. Sabonis is also a big part of what i think will help LaVine stay consist on the offensive end. Sounds like he just missed shots tonight in the 2nd half but without our best player, it will always be dangerous to heavily rely on jumpshooters.
 
Westbrook 19 mins Keon 13 mins. That needs to be flipped at the minimum. And Saric’s 7 minutes should be going to Keon - whatever Saric is giving you with shooting/spacing is offset with how horrendous he is on defense.
Yea this is just common sense. I could see if Saric hung his hat on defense, rebounding or anything that we actually need but come on now. I was sick the second i checked the boxscore and saw Keon’s minutes smh at first i assumed the guy got hurt.
 
Well, terrible loss

They didn’t come out ready to play in the 3rd quarter.


Phoenix didn’t look good at all and they weren’t very impressive in the second half either.

The only way you lose this game up 17 at the half to that team is coming out in the second with your head up your ass. It was apparent in the very first few minutes of the 3rd where the game was going.

Individual players each had their moments but the Kings are too small and they don’t have the speed and athleticism to make up for it. New season. Same story. It seems like only the fans can see it.
 
The guard defense outside of some plays here and there from LaVine and Schroder was horrendous but yeah, the ball just bounced right to the Suns on some plays.
I mean, as we expected Malik isn’t ever really going to be confused with Marcus Smart on defense and Russ just looked completely out of sorts for most of the game. Thought Nique did a pretty good job on Booker whenever he was switched onto him and despite Malik’s couple of good offensive possessions, it really felt like we punted the game when we took him out after he and Cardwell pretty created an entire three point possession on their own through force of will.
 
If you were told Sabonis was out, Keegan was out, Deebo would miss more free throws than he made and Lavine was 2-10 from three you would have guessed the kings were the ones down all game
 
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