sactowndog
Hall of Famer
Nice Lin. Need another against Memphis and hopefully a Deebo trade
[Game] 20/82: Kings @ Jazz [NBA Cup Game] 28 NOV 2025, 6:30pm PT/9:30pm ET
- Thread starter Mr. S£im Citrus
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ShastaKingsFan
All-Star
It's darn near impossible for a young player to get in any kind of rhythm with these iso ball dominant vets
coolhandluke
Starter
Dude is so skilled and smart. Needs to build that NBA body and he should be fine.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
Oh, there's definitely coordination going on there. Definitely. Perry sitting next to the bench lately is about as territorial as you can get. Perry is kind of easy to read because he'll be fairly open between those lines of gibberish. Petrie was the master at it. He'd literally say nothing via quotes and whatever that was to keep people of his trail, lol.
coolhandluke
Starter
Hey, why are you pointing at the moon?
Kings finish as one of only two teams (New Orleans Pelicans) to go winless in the NBA Cup.
coolhandluke
Starter
Dumars and Perry competing with each other
Kingz19
Hall of Famer
Until then, maybe they should get him a couple g-league starts to up his confidence. They should start giving Carter minutes now. Carter being in the doghouse on this group is completely unacceptable.
Long enough to flagrant foul a 3 point shooter but not talking specifically about this game. Just so far even in the blowouts he played extended minutes in, I just haven’t been clamoring for more other than the fact he is a recent draft pick. Just kinda getting “what does he do especially well?” vibe.
Maybe he needs to smash some jobbers to get the confidence up.
I thought he had a good game vs Golden State.
OptimusRhyme
Jive Turkey
damn 19 for Raynaud? was that all garbage time. Ive skipped the last 5 games
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
Pretty much. He looked like he was getting in the flow though so that was good.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
Deuce basically called out the Kings org saying after 20 games it was time to make "the shift" (go young). To paraphrase: The young guys need the minutes for development. The old guys aren't winning. And there is a cost to the young guys not being on the floor. In this game Clifford and Ellis got 6 minutes and 7 minutes respectively, while Carter was DNP. Deuce is frustrated, as he should be. Where exactly are we going playing DDR 36 minutes and Westbrook 33 minutes? And what's up with playing Keegan's 44.5 minutes? Is that going to continue? Come on management. Enough is enough.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
Yeah, Christie is sucking the confidence right out of him. The guy needs some consistent minutes to get a rhythm, not being jerked around with a minute here, a minute there. It's infuriating to watch.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
Yeah, and lo and behold, he hits a 3 pointer. Surprise, surprise.
MizzouKing
Starter
Max has been significantly better than expected, far from the "He needs to get much bigger/stronger if he wants to be an NBA player" narrative.
But be careful, because the hive mind likes to build people up and then turn around and tear them down...I'm starting to see signs of this with regard to Nique.
Both rookies are beyond solid gets, and like most here I eagerly want them to get more minutes for development.
The minutes will come but lord this is frustrating. I thought about checking to see if there were any Black Friday deals on league pass and quickly x'd the tab away. I think I can watch via the NBC sports app if we decide to become watchable after my current subscription expires around Christmas.
serbiangoat
Starter
I've been trying to figure out who Max reminds me of and tonight it finally came to me another frenchie and that's Joffrey Lauvergne, he's slightly bigger and less mobile than Joffrey but everything from the push shot / half hooks and style of play is similar.
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Gotta admit, I’ve been pretty disappointed in Nique Clifford so far.
I think he has only had one good game as a pro. He’s a rookie but you still expect a 4 year college player with an NBA ready body to show a bit more.
Frankly, Colby Jones looked better by quite a bit in his initial NBA games
Eh, huh?
He's in the rookie doghouse. Doesn't have a consistent role, plays 2 4 minute stints now. Never gets the ball when he is in because the vets just hog it.
Doug is just a very poor developmental coach. He has one mode: play the vets and if that doesn't work, dooible down on playing the vets more.
We give up 128 to the freaking Jazz and Keon/Nique/Carter, 3 of the best defensive players on the team, play a combined 13 minutes. He's just a joke at this point
Gotta hope Perry is getting Thibs ready for next season.
bball_nomad
Bench
Low budget porno.
Srzly
Bench
It is frustrating watching other teams run action and clearly have an offense they are running that involves moving the ball, when the Kings just go 0-1 passes and ISO.
There are 3 guys on the team that will just go into iso as soon as you pass them the ball. They dribble the air out of the ball and either shoot or toss someone a grenade at the end of the shot clock.
Because of that, almost every shot is contested it feels like.
There are 3 guys on the team that will just go into iso as soon as you pass them the ball. They dribble the air out of the ball and either shoot or toss someone a grenade at the end of the shot clock.
Because of that, almost every shot is contested it feels like.
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fansinceday1
Starter
It is thoroughly embarassing that Vivek wanted Josh Levine so bad. It’s the perfect example of how lacking vivek is in basketball knowledge.
There is no way Christie not playing the young guys is his decision. He’s doing the FO’s bidding.
There is no way Christie not playing the young guys is his decision. He’s doing the FO’s bidding.
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Are we saying this because we like Christie as Kings fans? Say we were 15-5 right now... would you be saying that Perry was controlling the rotations? Csnt have it both ways
gunks
Hall of Famer
Christie's atrocious coaching is actually pretty genius because rival GMs will be thinking "well yeah, of course DeRozen and Lavine look like ****, they're playing for Sacramento! If I trade a 1st rounder for them they'll look GREAT here and put us over the top!"
Keeping all our young prospects under the radar by setting them up for failure with extremely limited minutes (or none at all in Carter's case) is just *chef's kiss*
ShastaKingsFan
All-Star
I think we're having a hard time believing that a defensive role player in Christie, would seemingly push aside defensive roll players as a head coach who preaches defense. Would then seem that he's either lost his basketball iQ, or is part of another agenda...whether he truly believes in it, or is doing whatever it takes to extend his opportunity as an NBA head coach
But its not just this season, its last year too. We're at 72 games between his tenure as interim HC and full HC of him being very consistent in riding the veteran players and not giving any sort of leash or consistent role to the young guys.
That also goes back to my question. When do we start attributing anything to Christie? Game 100? 200? Ever?
Like if we rip 20 wins in a row, with the same lineup strategy we've employed. Would all the credit go to Perry? None to Doug?
Here's the way I see it:
We don't really know whether Christie is a good coach or not. Christie has been given a mismatched roster with a ridiculous excess of offensive talent at SG and a massive deficit of defensive ability.
Now, Christie was a very talented defender during his playing days, and one might have hoped that he could have found a way to draw up defensive schemes that would make this patchwork D passable. As it turns out, he has not been able to do that, but I doubt there are many here who believe that even a Thibodeau could have done much with this roster defensively.
So as it stands, this roster was never going anywhere anyhow. It needs a massive re-jigger at the least, which all of us hoped that Perry would be able to begin over the summer, but which didn't materialize. We are entering the next window for this rebuild (Dec. 15th to the trade deadline) and if nothing else, the reality of situation has become much clearer. We know Perry sees it, and we know he's going to be working to change up the roster.
In the meantime, winning and losing games becomes a tradeoff between a hard tank job and keeping the paying fans happy. Despite the overwhelming mood around here, I suspect pretty strongly that the average Kings fan on the street is a bit more interested in wins and a bit less interested in draft positioning than the KF.com community. On top of that, if Perry wants to find suitors for the players that don't fit our rebuild - particularly since some of them are juuuuust a tad overpaid - it's important to keep those players on the floor. Don't let them get rusty, don't give the suitors reason to think they have lost a step, and importantly, don't make the vets (and their agents) angry. You can't just bench a Zach LaVine in order to play 30 minutes of not-ready-for-prime-time Clifford without getting blackballed in the free agent market. Eventually, the front office will need to be friends with the agents again, no reason to burn bridges.
So here we are. Doug and Perry are almost certainly on the same page, and that page is: play the vets until we can ship them off.
Besides, do we really want our young players to get super-accustomed to crappy defensive team play and iso-after-iso offense when the idea appears to be to ultimately build something closer to a Princeton-style offense and smothering defense like we employed in Glory Days 1.0? Don't let the young'uns learn too many bad habits.
As such, I'm not really inclined to judge Doug's coaching, for good or for bad, when he's stuck with this roster. And, as I did with Vlade, and as I will with BJax if given the chance, I'm going to be guilty of giving way more leash to our Glory Days players than they deserve, because they're our guys from the one successful era of the team. I recognize it, I admit it, that's the way it is. Guilty.
Perhaps it would have been strategically better for Vivek (because we all know Doug is Vivek's guy) to bring in a sacrificial lamb as head coach before elevating Doug under these circumstances. But we also know that Vivek is reluctant to take off his purple-tinted glasses and see the actual situation of the team - Vivek couldn't strategically wait to bring in his guy, because he thought his guy could fix this. He was wrong, and that makes holding on to his guy through the troubled times that much harder. But it won't be me calling for Doug to go, not before he gets a real chance with a roster built for success.
Kingster
Hall of Famer
The only rationale I can come up with is that Christie is intent on appeasing the vets like DDR, Lavine and Westbrook so that the locker room won't totally blow up on him. In other words, he doesn't have the guts to go with a youth movement because of the internal politics of it all. I thought Perry's recent statements might give him political cover to go young, but apparently not.
Section 101
All-Star
Jackson is in charge of the defense.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
The team on paper is about as defensively capable as expectations, but we can't really even judge anything at a philosophical level with a team like this. This is why having rosters in this transition position sucks. Especially when the youth is getting crunched and the team is highlighting players like Westbrook who was basically out of the league prior to them signing him. He's playing well, doing his thing, but when he's gone the fans get the leftovers just like usual. They are literally just spinning their wheels at a franchise level. Wins mean nothing. Losses mean nothing. Other than for potential draft assets of course. Expecting any of these guys out there dangling to buy into almost anything at this point for anything other than brief stretches is delusion on part of the person expecting it. We've literally seen this type of situation before during the 20 year downturn. It doesn't matter how unprofessional it is yadda yadda it is what it is.
If there are any brains being used here its pure showcasing and keeping vets happy. Christie and Perry say they want a certain type of team and then literally squash out the only two roster players on the entire team with a positive DBPM in Devin Carter and Keon Ellis. Without a specific plan, this is one of the most nutzo say one thing do another deal we've seen this team do. Like maybe EVER. On the surface it's madness.
If there are any brains being used here its pure showcasing and keeping vets happy. Christie and Perry say they want a certain type of team and then literally squash out the only two roster players on the entire team with a positive DBPM in Devin Carter and Keon Ellis. Without a specific plan, this is one of the most nutzo say one thing do another deal we've seen this team do. Like maybe EVER. On the surface it's madness.
ShastaKingsFan
All-Star
I think it's two things combined. He's not really an NBA ready head coach, along with being in a position where he doesn't have control of what is going on with his players. I wouldn't give anyone other than the players credit for a successful run this season, if nothing else changes. Once the slate is cleaned of most of these vets, with Lavine and Derozan at the top of the list, then we will probably start to see how Christie might be able to influence things. Until then, it's about managing contracts.
I'm of the firm belief that not a single other NBA team would have even interviewed him for a head coaching job. The same for Vlade as a GM. So what does that say about their qualifications and the politics involved? Bobby Jackson is actually the most qualified of any of the former Kings players, including Bibby who got the Sac State job.
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