Actually found another way to lose...

[oldman52]

I cant believe coach Smart didnt tell his players, that whatever they do, dont foul a shooter going for the 3 pointer. But what does that idiot Thornton do, he fouls the guy, 3 free throws later, they are in O.T., where of all people, they have Garcia shooting in the clutch, which he misses badly. Game over.

Maybe theres a reason Smart was fired after 1 year previously, and the Kings management was just to cheap to get a real coach.

What an embarassing way to lose!

 

[Padrino]

I cant believe coach Smart didnt tell his players, that whatever they do, dont foul a shooter going for the 3 pointer. But what does that idiot Thornton do, he fouls the guy, 3 free throws later, they are in O.T., where of all people, they have Garcia shooting in the clutch, which he misses badly. Game over.

Maybe theres a reason Smart was fired after 1 year previously, and the Kings management was just to cheap to get a real coach.

What an embarassing way to lose!

its how a young team loses. such rebuilds are never pretty until they are, to be irritatingly obvious. every team ever saddled with the "youngest in the nba" tag manages losses like this. in the nba, you have to learn how to win. the w's don't come naturally...

a roster and coaching staff with this much upheaval in a lockout-shortened season--with no training camp, very few preseason games, little practice time, and lengthy road trips--was always going to lose at a persistent clip, no matter what strides were made. the kings are just too young to improvise this thing on the fly...

its why i, and others, have been clamoring for the acquisition of veteran leadership that can be plugged into the starting unit, preferably at the SF position. its why i continue to be perplexed by those looking forward to the draft this year when there's no surefire future all star waiting to be picked in the top 10, as if the kings need another undisciplined rookie with "potential," no matter how talented...

veterans know how to win. and i use the term "veteran" very loosely. many "veterans" are in their late-20's and 30's. but you can be a seasoned "veteran" in the nba at 23 or 24, if you're made of the right stuff and have been privy to the right kind of coaching. unfortunately, the kings young talents did not receive such tutelage under paul westphal. i think they're getting some of the "right stuff" from keith smart, but i'm also not fond of smart's affinity for small ball, which is a product of poor tutelage under don nelson. bad mentoring begets bad basketball, and its unsettling with respect to the kings' near future...

unorthodox lineups are situationally useful in the nba, but when they're an indecisive crutch in a sport that's still won, more or less, in a traditional fashion, then players aren't necessarily being placed in a position to succeed. these young kings NEED that. they NEED to be coached properly in order to succeed. they will continue to make boneheaded mistakes regardless, but if the winning is ever going to become regular rather than sporadic, its going to take time, patience, and proper mentoring...

that said, patience is something that the average fan is short on, especially several years into an already-lengthy rebuild. impatience tends to magnify these kinds of losses when it should be noted that the kings wire-to-wire play against the nuggets ON THE ROAD last night was a marked improvement on their two blowout losses against the nuggets earlier this season. the road is tough in the nba, especially when your road trips are more frequent than your home stands, as is the case in a lockout-shortened season. you play the same number of games home and away, but you're on the road for greater stretches more frequently than you would be in a regular season...

however, next up is a nine game home stand, so we'll see what these kings are made of. they've got a winning record at home. if they can wrap up the next nine games while retaining that winning record at home, its undeniable progress. the w's may be infrequent for any "youngest team in the nba," but when they start coming, its always at home. eventually it spills over to the road...

edit: i just looked at the breakdown of the kings' record. they're 8-6 at home, and 4-20 on the road. i knew the disparity was bad, but its hard to believe that, in a lockout-shortened season, they've played ten more games on the road than at home!! to this point in the season, they've played the least number of games at home in the entire nba, and have the greatest disparity between home games played and road games played...

its nice that the schedule will be home-heavy at the end of the season, but it won't really matter then, will it? it would have been nice if the nba schedulers had been more balanced with the kings. a few more home games earlier in the season might have helped build some momentum. now the playoffs are well beyond a pipe dream. the kings were never really going to be in the playoff picture this season, but it became an impossibility before it could even be called something to strive after...

 

[LWP777]

Great first post.....

 

[Kingster]

I cant believe coach Smart didnt tell his players, that whatever they do, dont foul a shooter going for the 3 pointer. But what does that idiot Thornton do, he fouls the guy, 3 free throws later, they are in O.T., where of all people, they have Garcia shooting in the clutch, which he misses badly. Game over.

Maybe theres a reason Smart was fired after 1 year previously, and the Kings management was just to cheap to get a real coach.

What an embarassing way to lose!

Thornton is no rookie. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that you should never fould a three point shooter. It's all on Thornton.

 

[jthompson1]

I cant believe coach Smart didnt tell his players, that whatever they do, dont foul a shooter going for the 3 pointer. But what does that idiot Thornton do, he fouls the guy, 3 free throws later, they are in O.T., where of all people, they have Garcia shooting in the clutch, which he misses badly. Game over.

Maybe theres a reason Smart was fired after 1 year previously, and the Kings management was just to cheap to get a real coach.

What an embarassing way to lose!

Were you on the bench during the timeout?

 

[ArcoKings]

Last night was disappointing and heart breaking. MT shouldn't have fouled BUT the Kings missed some shots at the end and didn't IT miss a FT? MT's foul shouldn't have mattered. .06 seconds away from a win is hard to swallow.

(I better get back at patching some holes in the wall )

 

[The Hammer]

I cant believe coach Smart didnt tell his players, that whatever they do, dont foul a shooter going for the 3 pointer. But what does that idiot Thornton do, he fouls the guy, 3 free throws later, they are in O.T., where of all people, they have Garcia shooting in the clutch, which he misses badly. Game over.

Maybe theres a reason Smart was fired after 1 year previously, and the Kings management was just to cheap to get a real coach.

What an embarassing way to lose!

Slow your roll old man.

A professional basketball player should NOT need to be told that simple of a thing. The coach in that timeout should be spending time talking about possible matchups, switches, special zone they might run, potential easy plays to guard against... not reviewing basic fundamental things that each pro should know. I guarantee you though that Marcus will have learned that lesson.

Thornton may have been TRYING to foul before the shot... on the replay it certainly appears he did... basically going in hard for a steal and not minding if there was contact, cause either way you get a steal or you foul them and it's a good out come. He may have been informing his players of that. And, how do we know he DIDN'T tell his players not to foul a three, and it was just a dumb mistake?

This was all on Thornton, no two ways about it. That you blame the coach for this??? Makes me think you have issues. Weird ones.

 

[fansinceday1]

Slow your roll old man.

A professional basketball player should NOT need to be told that simple of a thing. The coach in that timeout should be spending time talking about possible matchups, switches, special zone they might run, potential easy plays to guard against... not reviewing basic fundamental things that each pro should know. I guarantee you though that Marcus will have learned that lesson.

Thornton may have been TRYING to foul before the shot... on the replay it certainly appears he did... basically going in hard for a steal and not minding if there was contact, cause either way you get a steal or you foul them and it's a good out come. He may have been informing his players of that. And, how do we know he DIDN'T tell his players not to foul a three, and it was just a dumb mistake?

This was all on Thornton, no two ways about it. That you blame the coach for this??? Makes me think you have issues. Weird ones.

Thortons stupidity reflects directly on the coach. Same as in football when the offensive line continues to false start. That is attributed to lack of discipline which reflects directly on the coaching staff. Thorton committed the foul but this reflects directly on the coaching staff. Even though Thorton should know better Coach Smart better be hammering his players about basketball 101. This keeps happening the FO isn't gonna fire the players, right?

 

[Bricklayer]

Thortons stupidity reflects directly on the coach. Same as in football when the offensive line continues to false start. That is attributed to lack of discipline which reflects directly on the coaching staff. Thorton committed the foul but this reflects directly on the coaching staff. Even though Thorton should know better Coach Smart better be hammering his players about basketball 101. This keeps happening the FO isn't gonna fire the players, right?

I don't think at the NBA level you ever hammer players about the need not to foul guys shooting threes to tie the game with under a second to go. You can probably assume that has been convered somewhere int he last dozen years of organized basketball these guys have played, and spend your time more productively.

 

[The Hammer]

Thortons stupidity reflects directly on the coach. Same as in football when the offensive line continues to false start. That is attributed to lack of discipline which reflects directly on the coaching staff. Thorton committed the foul but this reflects directly on the coaching staff. Even though Thorton should know better Coach Smart better be hammering his players about basketball 101. This keeps happening the FO isn't gonna fire the players, right?

I get your point but it's not a good analogy. Does the coach get blamed for throwing interceptions? Repeatedly bad execution is one thing, mental mistakes in the flow of the game is another. Thing is our offensive and defensive execution has been steadily getting better since Smart took over, so he's got the trend going in his favor and will be given the benefit of any doubt, if there is one, which in this case there isn't. You can't be wasting time on bball 101 when you've got two minutes to drive home more salient points. At a certain point you've got to simply rely on your players.

 

[uolj]

Repeated mistakes is one thing. Done by one player it's a bad sign for the player. Done by multiple players it's a bad sign for the coach. Mistakes occurring once or twice are frustrating but don't tell us much.

 

[bajaden]

A mistake is a mistake, and when it happens shouldn't make it any greater or lesser of a mistake. If he makes that mistake in the third quarter, no one remembers, but because it happened in the final seconds, all that seems to matter is Thorntons mistake. So now he's stupid and an idiot. Never mind that if he hadn't been one of the few players that was capable of scoring the ball last night, none of it would have mattered. So maybe, just maybe, we should try and keep some perspective here. If Whiteside hadn't been called for defensive 3 seconds, we would have won the game by one point. I can point to several other players that made mistakes in the last couple of minutes of that game.

So yeah, Thornton made a mistake, and its glaring because of when it happened. But he's hardly the reason we lost that game.

 

[IfAt1st]

..its nice that the schedule will be home-heavy at the end of the season, but it won't really matter then, will it? it would have been nice if the nba schedulers had been more balanced with the kings. a few more home games earlier in the season might have helped build some momentum. now the playoffs are well beyond a pipe dream. the kings were never really going to be in the playoff picture this season, but it became an impossibility before it could even be called something to strive after...

Yep, it's one of the more frustrating and aggravatingly pissing-me-off aspects of the NBA this season.


Basically, barring a miracle (this Kings team hitting the ground and starting the season as a playoff team) the NBA schedulers decided and dictated EXACTLY what this season was going to be like for the Kings.
They guaranteed with their schedule that the Kings fanbase was going to be turned off by midseason.
And that's just not something that could, or should have happened in THIS specific year.
Not with everything going on with the team and the economy and the city/arena situation.

Throw in the fact that the Kings consistently get the worst calls of ANY team I've ever watched at home (there is NO such thing as "home cookin" where the Kings are involved), and there's a hell of a lot of ammunition out there for people who believe there's a conspiracy against the Kings in the NBA.

BTW - the easiest evidence of this was the fact that for SO many years, they started the season with terribly hard games on the road, typically the Texas DeathTriangle Trip that almost guaranteed losses to start every season against other teams during their home openers (Gotta be a 75% win rate for home playoff teams).

Great post, BTW. Full of good observations.