Finally watched a live game except missed most of the 1Q. Temple continued his poor play and on most other teams would probably get yanked by now. In pivotal 3Q Joerger decided to let the starters get pummeled before bringing in the bench who at least looked more interested in playing minus Cauley-Stein who looked fairly poor. Hill and Randolph looked ok in parts the 2Q but were part of the train-wreck 3rd. Mason played ok later, but shot terribly; Hield got some minutes and shot ok, but didn't get featured much. Bogdan again looked most consistent though no steals, but he did defense Taj at one point into a 50/50 out-of-bounds back to the Kings.
There were 2 Wolves runs in the 3rd and Joerger elected to try to play the starters through both of them more or less. Kings were down around 10 pts and the Wolves went on a run to down 18, and then another bigger run to down 27. I might've liked to see Joerger bring in the bench at down 18 not down 27 but that's just me. For about 4 or 5 min, the Kings offense fell out completely. The game was reminiscent of the Clipper game debacle awhile back though no Hield superman play to generate the needed humongous scoring differential. Grant and Reynolds blamed the Kings defense but it was the offense and the ineptitude of the starters on offense. Turnovers hurt in the 2Q, but they fought back down from 15 to 9. Awful defense a few seconds before half to allow a clean running 35 footer and made 3pt. Randolph and Hill helped bring the Kings back in the 2Q, and perhaps Joerger thought they could do it again, but they failed miserably. Only when Joerger brought in the bench did the scoring stabilize. Kings were outclassed and got blitzed by the Wolves athleticism. You could argue (like me) that Joerger didn't bring the bench quickly enough, but its hindsight 20/20 and didn't occur, and probably wouldn't have mattered. To win, at a minimum the team would've needed Cauley-Stein to at least have a solid to excellent game, and it wasn't there. He looked rushed and confused on offense thanks much to the Wolves, and not going for rebounds nearly enough on defense. Temple's utility on defense was muted and he looked especially bad getting beaten on defense and jacking up misses.