[Game] Kings @ Suns Game Thread 11/12/2010

[ArcoKings]

There's just no fire and heart with this team. PW can't dial in the rotations and Tyreke can't do everything. The beat goes on: lack of D, missed FTs and tonight, 5-18 on 3s. I know the Suns are a better team but the Kings just don't improve. This is very frustrating. WTF happend to Donte?? Things better change quick.

 

[Bricklayer]

And here let me jsut note: This was not as bad as the last dozen posts make it seem. We a) could not shoot, an ongoing problem, b) Beno's defense could make me look like an All Star, and c) I ahve no idea who decided that switching every Nash pick and roll was a good idea.

Other than that, there were scattered individual dumb plays all aorund, but we got better efforts out of Landry, out of Cousisn, Jackson hustled, Cisco provided excellent hsutel in the early 4th, we cut down on turnovers..until critical times, and Reke was very strong as a passer/defender after half. This was a better effort than Minny, and one where I cold at least clearly identify what needed to be fixed rather than a general collapse.

 

[FaStRmAn]

Why is Wright even on this TEAM! He SUCKS! And so does the rest of the Kings roster right now! I am sick of how bad this team is playing! I know it is early in the season, but WTF? Who can watch this garbage??? If they dont start playing better, there needs to be some drastic changes made or something! The effort level is very poor! It's like they are just going through the motions! As fans, we need to see SOME improvement of some kind. ANYTHING! What I see is a totally disjointed group of players that in no way, shape or form resemble a TEAM! Just a bunch of scrubs wearing the same colored uni with no continuity at ALL! The Coaching must not be working, because I am pretty certain PW isn't seeing on the floor what he teaches in practice. This season looks like it is going to end up in a smoldering heap at the bottom of the crater. Good thing they got those early wins, because wins are gonna be few and far between with this group. Smallest payroll in the league is certainly showing through loud and clear! Kings desperately needed another shooter as a guard or sf, and the Maloofs didn't kick down the coin to bring in a shooter. There were plenty available but none were brought in to help. Now we have a team of so so shooters who are all ice cold and Tyreke who can not carry this teams dead weight. Cousins wont get ANY calls from the refs this year at least. It's like they HATE him or something! Does he go over to the refs before the game and tell them to all f&^k off ?? This season is in imminent danger of going in the tank. Too bad, because it looked like they had some life those first few games. Now it seems that flame was snuffed out. Oh well...

 

[Bricklayer]

It really wasn't effort guys. Who out of Landry/Casspi/Daly/Reke/Beno/Jackson/Cisco/Cousins (main rotation) didn't give an effort tonight? Beno might be the only candidate, jsut for the awful D, and yet he was still mostly trying, just not getting it done. Jackson hustled, Cisco hustled, at least later. Cousins banged for abords. Reke was very aggressive defnsively late. landry finally gave u an effort on the glass an around the rim. Who is this non-efforting guy wwe played tonight?

 

[IfAt1st]

You're right about some of that, Brick -
I'm watching the replay, and there were some good aspects of the game - they just got obliterated by the boneheadedness of the 2nd half.

Beno is not a big problem on this team - he and Dalembert are the only consistently good Kings this year.
His defense in the 1st quarter was quite good on Nash, and it is physically impossible to slip through most NBA pick-and-rolls. Our bigs seem to have never defended a pick-and-roll in their lives.

As Grant/Jerry said (or was it PW?), Nash had a Hall of Fame game - we just got in the way of the buzzsaw, really.

With teams playing out of their minds against us, I fear the only way we're going to turn this season around is that the other teams have to stop playing so much better than average against us. It happened the 1st 4 games, it may happen again.

 

[DeMoN]

I'm really trying to figure out why Wright is getting minutes over Donte, there really isn't any logical explaination why.

 

[Tetsujin]

And here let me jsut note: This was not as bad as the last dozen posts make it seem. We a) could not shoot, an ongoing problem, b) Beno's defense could make me look like an All Star, and c) I ahve no idea who decided that switching every Nash pick and roll was a good idea.

Other than that, there were scattered individual dumb plays all aorund, but we got better efforts out of Landry, out of Cousisn, Jackson hustled, Cisco provided excellent hsutel in the early 4th, we cut down on turnovers..until critical times, and Reke was very strong as a passer/defender after half. This was a better effort than Minny, and one where I cold at least clearly identify what needed to be fixed rather than a general collapse.

This. The fanbase as a hole has a general tendency to act like a bunch of drama queens (note: this applies to all fans in general, not just us). This game was a marked improvement over the Minnesota atrocity.

 

[Kingstime]

It really is mind boggling that for all the years we want a shot blocking big, we finally get one added to what we thought was a young hungry team and we get these efforts 2 nights in a row. It seems to me these guys are trying out there but it isn't gelling well at all so far, I guess I really should of been alarmed like most of you during the pre season. I've still got hopes for this squad to get it going and turning around our young season hopefully we can get some good home cooking.

 

[IfAt1st]

After watching the game thru a 2nd time, we lost this one (again) in the 2nd quarter.
DMC was killing the Suns, and he and Darnell JAckson were scopping up the offensive glass (Landry did later in the 2nd qtr, too).

But noone was hitting shots - our backups came in and promptly got us in a 9 pt hole that we never could fight back from.
I'd like to know the shooting % in that absurd 2nd qtr - there were 2 possessions where we got 4 shots off and missed them ALL.
I'm beginning to think that whoever gets the offensive rebound should force it back up to the rim and throw up whatever they can - it would be better than kicking it out to wide open 3 pt shooters who continually miss, or resetting the play and getting a miss.

Wright missed 2 or 3 shots and blew his defensive assignments, Darnell missed at least 3 shots he had been hitting, and Cisco continued his Jekyll/Hyde play by missing wide open threes, turning it over leading to Suns buckets and fouling guys for the And-1.

I doubt if we're going to beat many teams when our 2nd squad keeps getting us in 9-point holes.
The Lakers almost always keep at least 1 of their starters in with the backup squad (Kobe or Gasol) - I think PW HAS to keep one of our consistent guys in with the 2nd squad (either Reke/Sam/Beno).

 

[rainmaker]

After watching the game thru a 2nd time, we lost this one (again) in the 2nd quarter.
DMC was killing the Suns, and he and Darnell JAckson were scopping up the offensive glass (Landry did later in the 2nd qtr, too).

But noone was hitting shots - our backups came in and promptly got us in a 9 pt hole that we never could fight back from.
I'd like to know the shooting % in that absurd 2nd qtr - there were 2 possessions where we got 4 shots off and missed them ALL.
I'm beginning to think that whoever gets the offensive rebound should force it back up to the rim and throw up whatever they can - it would be better than kicking it out to wide open 3 pt shooters who continually miss, or resetting the play and getting a miss.

Wright missed 2 or 3 shots and blew his defensive assignments, Darnell missed at least 3 shots he had been hitting, and Cisco continued his Jekyll/Hyde play by missing wide open threes, turning it over leading to Suns buckets and fouling guys for the And-1.

I doubt if we're going to beat many teams when our 2nd squad keeps getting us in 9-point holes.
The Lakers almost always keep at least 1 of their starters in with the backup squad (Kobe or Gasol) - I think PW HAS to keep one of our consistent guys in with the 2nd squad (either Reke/Sam/Beno).

We lost in the the 4th when it was a 3 point game, Wright came in for Tyreke, and they went on an 8-0 run. Tyreke comes back down 11. 2nd quarter had no bearing on the final outcome.

 

[Gabriel]

It really wasn't effort guys. Who out of Landry/Casspi/Daly/Reke/Beno/Jackson/Cisco/Cousins (main rotation) didn't give an effort tonight? Beno might be the only candidate, jsut for the awful D, and yet he was still mostly trying, just not getting it done. Jackson hustled, Cisco hustled, at least later. Cousins banged for abords. Reke was very aggressive defnsively late. landry finally gave u an effort on the glass an around the rim. Who is this non-efforting guy wwe played tonight?

The fault is on the man who was nowhere mentioned in your post.

Coach Westphal.

 

[Entity]

The fault is on the man who was nowhere mentioned in your post.

Coach Westphal.

Exactly Its not the non-efforting I am worried about. Its the non-talented.

 

[FaStRmAn]

It really wasn't effort guys. Who out of Landry/Casspi/Daly/Reke/Beno/Jackson/Cisco/Cousins (main rotation) didn't give an effort tonight? Beno might be the only candidate, jsut for the awful D, and yet he was still mostly trying, just not getting it done. Jackson hustled, Cisco hustled, at least later. Cousins banged for abords. Reke was very aggressive defnsively late. landry finally gave u an effort on the glass an around the rim. Who is this non-efforting guy wwe played tonight?

Maybe Lack of effort was not the right term. Lack of a conserted effort more aptly describes the level of inconsistnecy by the team. There seems to be a lack of teamwork, a lack of unified action. They dont seem to run plays, and when they do, it always seems like they are taking shortcuts or breaking off to try and make one on one moves that are not always successful. I just dont see the staggered screens, pick and rolls, or other offensive plays that get a team quality shots. I think the players are mostly individually giving effort (accept maybe Beno on defense), but as a unit they look disjointed and lost on both offense and defense for long stretches of the game. I think PW has to take some of the blame for the team not running plays or being more on the same page.

 

[kingsboi]

Well, this game was close until the 8 min. mark or so in the 4th quarter when Westphal decided to take Reke out and the Suns put in Nash/J-Rich. From there, they took a 11 point lead and never looked back. I was talking to Kings fans around me about how Tyreke should of been in there as soon as Nash came back in. He made their engine go and it clearly showed, as Tyreke makes our engine go. It hurt us and Phoenix just had too much offense to let up a eleven point deficit to a team that struggles to score as it is. What's disappointing is that we only managed to score 89 points against a team that is not exactly known to be a "defensive" ball club. Very discouraging, to say the least. I did not see too many Kings fans however, was not surprised. I also do not understand why JT did not get any playing time, I can't believe it's come to the point where he used to be a rotational 4 last year to going to a DNP, is he following in Donte's footsteps? If so, might as well trade them both.

 

[Tetsujin]

Well, this game was close until the 8 min. mark or so in the 4th quarter when Westphal decided to take Reke out and the Suns put in Nash/J-Rich. From there, they took a 11 point lead and never looked back. I was talking to Kings fans around me about how Tyreke should of been in there as soon as Nash came back in. He made their engine go and it clearly showed, as Tyreke makes our engine go. It hurt us and Phoenix just had too much offense to let up a eleven point deficit to a team that struggles to score as it is. What's disappointing is that we only managed to score 89 points against a team that is not exactly known to be a "defensive" ball club. Very discouraging, to say the least. I did not see too many Kings fans however, was not surprised. I also do not understand why JT did not get any playing time, I can't believe it's come to the point where he used to be a rotational 4 last year to going to a DNP, is he following in Donte's footsteps? If so, might as well trade them both.

To be fair, Reke was literally on the verge of passing out when Coach pulled him out. Whether coach needed to take him out a bit earlier and put him in earlier is another matter entirely