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So close, yet so far: OT woes sting Kings
Sacramento, still trying to reach the playoffs, is 0-5 in extra-period games this season.
By Sam Amick - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:10 am PST Friday, March 2, 2007
Go ahead and look at the entire season, if you must, but it was all there in one game.
Kings-Lakers, Jan. 4, Arco Arena.
Long before the topic of this team and its penchant for losing close games became so popular to everyone but the head coach, this was merely the surging Kings against their old rivals and a chance to reach .500.
There was Kobe Bryant nearly pulling off a monstrous triple double (42 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists), but there also were the Kings fighting back from 21 points down in the third quarter and putting themselves in position to finish the comeback.
A few missed free throws later, it was the Lakers forcing the extra period and winning. The Kings, meanwhile, lost their second overtime affair in what officially became a bad habit when they did it again the next game against Portland.
In overtime games, the Kings are 0-5, a maddening enough statistic to inspire the team's owners to complain somewhat frequently about the topic and the fact that their team has lost 11 games by five or fewer points.
"If you're a salesman and you go into an account, the first thing you want to do is to close the sale," Kings co-owner Joe Maloof said during the All-Star break. "We haven't been able to do it, and I don't understand why. That's what we have to get better at it."
Asked to elaborate on possible explanations for the close losses, Joe Maloof said: "Maybe more experience. We've been up 20 or so points, and then we lose them. Something's not right. Something's not right."
The buzzword was "experience," and Maloof later went on to clarify the sentiment when he told the New York Times he considered coach Eric Musselman "inexperienced." Joe Maloof declined comment on the matter, but Gavin Maloof said Thursday that this was no indication of declining support from the team's ownership.
"He's still our coach, plain and simple," Gavin Maloof said. "It's still what it's always been. We're behind him, and that's the way it is. We're going to move forward until he's not our coach. That's the way it's always been. We're behind him, and that's the way it is."
As it stands, they are the Kings of close losses, having also fallen in overtime to Miami and twice to Houston. Their overtime mark is the worst in the NBA this season, and it ties the 1980-81 Kansas City Kings for the worst in franchise history. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the 1979-80 Golden State Warriors had the worst overtime record in league history at 0-8.
Although Musselman has been as frustrated as anyone by the defeats, he contends that games such as the first Lakers matchup show how competitive his team has been. The Kings have a point differential of minus-0.4, nearly breaking even in a category considered by many head coaches to be the most telling about a team's performance level.
Typically, a team's point differential closely reflects its record. This is the case with the top seven teams in the Western Conference, each of which has a positive point differential. Entering Thursday, those teams had .500 or above records, whereas every team below was in the red.
The Kings, though, have the best mark among the rest, yet they entered Thursday in 12th place and three games out of the final playoff spot. The eighth-place Clippers, by comparison, have a minus-1.4 point differential.
Asked if he felt he was still reaching his players, Musselman pointed to the close games as proof.
"I'm definitely reaching them because of the results," he said Wednesday. "We're in a lot of games, and people around the league that I talk to respect that the team's playing fairly hard."
About the writer: The Bee's Sam Amick can be reached at samick@sacbee.com.
So close, yet so far: OT woes sting Kings
Sacramento, still trying to reach the playoffs, is 0-5 in extra-period games this season.
By Sam Amick - Bee Staff Writer
Last Updated 12:10 am PST Friday, March 2, 2007
Go ahead and look at the entire season, if you must, but it was all there in one game.
Kings-Lakers, Jan. 4, Arco Arena.
Long before the topic of this team and its penchant for losing close games became so popular to everyone but the head coach, this was merely the surging Kings against their old rivals and a chance to reach .500.
There was Kobe Bryant nearly pulling off a monstrous triple double (42 points, 10 rebounds, nine assists), but there also were the Kings fighting back from 21 points down in the third quarter and putting themselves in position to finish the comeback.
A few missed free throws later, it was the Lakers forcing the extra period and winning. The Kings, meanwhile, lost their second overtime affair in what officially became a bad habit when they did it again the next game against Portland.
In overtime games, the Kings are 0-5, a maddening enough statistic to inspire the team's owners to complain somewhat frequently about the topic and the fact that their team has lost 11 games by five or fewer points.
"If you're a salesman and you go into an account, the first thing you want to do is to close the sale," Kings co-owner Joe Maloof said during the All-Star break. "We haven't been able to do it, and I don't understand why. That's what we have to get better at it."
Asked to elaborate on possible explanations for the close losses, Joe Maloof said: "Maybe more experience. We've been up 20 or so points, and then we lose them. Something's not right. Something's not right."
The buzzword was "experience," and Maloof later went on to clarify the sentiment when he told the New York Times he considered coach Eric Musselman "inexperienced." Joe Maloof declined comment on the matter, but Gavin Maloof said Thursday that this was no indication of declining support from the team's ownership.
"He's still our coach, plain and simple," Gavin Maloof said. "It's still what it's always been. We're behind him, and that's the way it is. We're going to move forward until he's not our coach. That's the way it's always been. We're behind him, and that's the way it is."
As it stands, they are the Kings of close losses, having also fallen in overtime to Miami and twice to Houston. Their overtime mark is the worst in the NBA this season, and it ties the 1980-81 Kansas City Kings for the worst in franchise history. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the 1979-80 Golden State Warriors had the worst overtime record in league history at 0-8.
Although Musselman has been as frustrated as anyone by the defeats, he contends that games such as the first Lakers matchup show how competitive his team has been. The Kings have a point differential of minus-0.4, nearly breaking even in a category considered by many head coaches to be the most telling about a team's performance level.
Typically, a team's point differential closely reflects its record. This is the case with the top seven teams in the Western Conference, each of which has a positive point differential. Entering Thursday, those teams had .500 or above records, whereas every team below was in the red.
The Kings, though, have the best mark among the rest, yet they entered Thursday in 12th place and three games out of the final playoff spot. The eighth-place Clippers, by comparison, have a minus-1.4 point differential.
Asked if he felt he was still reaching his players, Musselman pointed to the close games as proof.
"I'm definitely reaching them because of the results," he said Wednesday. "We're in a lot of games, and people around the league that I talk to respect that the team's playing fairly hard."
About the writer: The Bee's Sam Amick can be reached at samick@sacbee.com.
