[Game] Kings vs Raptors, 10/8/2025 7PM Pacific 10PM Eastern (Pre-Season)
- Thread starter Caccia
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sactowndog
Hall of Famer
Damn. Paying so little attention I confused Eubanks and Cardwell.
sactowndog
Hall of Famer
See you all at Stockton this year. They might be the more interesting team.
oh no I'm just saying even if he actually loves it here I don't see him lasting the season.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
Does seem to fit considering Max can shoot.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
What? No, they tried. If you can only defend 94 by turning one shoulder and giving up one side of the floor then you aren't a full court defender. Feet planted, toes towards the man with the ball. That's the test. Carter is the only easy pass.
sactowndog
Hall of Famer
Fixed it
sactowndog
Hall of Famer
Doug’s gutless. We saw that last year and his entire radio career. Nothing has changed and nothing will.
sactowndog
Hall of Famer
Perhaps the contract is bothering him.
coolhandluke
Starter
You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. If the Kings want defense they need to get and play defensive personnel. Defense is not just effort, it is a honed skill. Everyone and their grandma knows what to do but the Kings FO decides to play ostrich defense.
I thought Keon Ellis was the worst player on the floor for us on our Summer League squad for the one game I was at in Vegas a year ago and yet when the dust cleared on the NBA regular season he was still our best point of attack defender and he maintains a 42.9% career average on 501 three-point shots 3 years into his NBA career. That is not a player you trade. I just think he's a guy who only gets his pulse elevated for games that count.
NewArena
All-Star
WOW. Yea, he's gonna be getting minutes this season, that's for sure.
coolhandluke
Starter
This is just delusional. We don't have the personnel to defend 94 feet. You need long athletic personnel and a deep rotation to pull that off. We are a small and older team that's better off sticking to opponents like a gnat once they are past half court. Be pesky and play the percentages. There's no point in exhausting yourself playing 94 feet which opens up bigger holes in the defense. The first order of business for a coach is Know Your Personnel (KYP) and tailor your schemes for them instead of the other way around. This is unacceptable.
SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
It will all be revealed and then there's the "two timelines". All that is on the other timeline. Full court pressure begins and ends with the PG spot so it's all up to Schroder and Monk at this point. Monk is by far not a defender, Schroder hasn't really been for awhile now and wasn't ever really some lockdown player to begin with. Keon played PG tonight which was a little bit of a surprise. He handled well, didn't really create anything for his teammates but wasn't horrible getting the ball up. The issue with Keon is always going to be physicality. He's probably like 165 pounds and gets pushed around at times. He's more of a pest on defense, not a real true stopper. Carter, Keon, Nique, Keegan, and Cardwell. Now that's a defensive unit. Top it off with the athletic ability of Jones and Max and there's something there on that end. Lets see how the season shakes out.
Caccia
Starter
I was surprised that Schröder and Monk shared the court for several minutes. That does not strike me as a felicitous pairing, and it did not go well. I was expecting more a lineup of Monk, Ellis, Clifford, IJ, Eubanks: two older vets and three younger players, including one rookie.
ockingsfan
Starter
Now that Doug has the security of a full contract, I'm hoping he balances this line up out. If he is serious about the starters playing 94 feet 85% of the time, he needs to get his best defensive players on the court more. The roster is actually pretty balanced with offense and defense, but the starting line up and bench rotations are not.
Simple fix to balance out the line up, if Doug has the cajones to pull it off would be to install a starting line up and rotation:
PF: Keegan (defense) / IJ (defense)
SF: LaVine (offense) / DDR (offense) / Nique (defense-offense)
C: Domas (offense) / Raynaud (offense) / Caldwell (defense)
SG: Keon (defense) / Monk (offense)
PG: Schroeder (offense) / DC (defense)
Congratulations! This post has been awarded the inaugural Golden Eeyore Award for exemplifying the ability to find the raincloud in every silver lining!
The problem with this approach is that you can't play good team defense with only 2 good defenders on the floor. We saw this during Davion's brief Kings tenure when he was often blamed for making the right read because his teammates didn't understand positioning and weren't doing their job. Forcing a shooter to pump fake and drive by closing out hard and strategically opening up a lane to the middle of the floor is the best way to defend the three point line. It's what everyone else should be doing but if the help defense never arrives it looks like the initial defender just gave up a wide open dunk or a layup. Other teams are going to exploit a lazy defensive rotation every time.
We all seem to understand this concept on offense (what happens when 3 out of 5 players can't shoot the outside jumper -- the other two players have a hard time getting open) but it seems to be less understood when it comes to defense. The way the game is coached and officiated now, you're not going to be able to sick your best defender on their best iso-scorer and bottle up the offense. Defending the entire half court effectively at this point with so many capable shooters in the league requires 5 players all working together.
I'm also a little confused why you've seemingly identified Nique Clifford as the one two-way (offense-defense) player on the team and then hidden him at the end of the rotation. I agree that he is effective on offense because of his playmaking ability and is at worst an average defender so shouldn't that make him a guy you want starting for you? I've got Ellis, Clifford, and Murray as the three players that I for sure want to see starting because all three of them have skills which make them effective role-players on both offense and defense. That is how you build a balanced lineup -- as much as possible there should be no weak links on either side of the floor.
Dime Dropper
All-Star
The good: Nique Clifford
The bad: Everything else
The bad: Everything else
Alright Doug, let's see what happens when the games count. I do not care about preseason results and this is the time to try different things. But you can talk this talk all you want, but the only way to really implement this change and expect it to be enforced is through minutes.
The 3pt defense was inexcusable. Literally carbon copy of all our problems from last year. And even more frustrating is i think a lot of the offensive concepts looked great; generated a ton of open shots that just need to be hit. If we only allowed even "league average" 3pt defense, we have a chance to win this game. But it's all meaningless until we freaking address the 3pt defense and stop hedging off the driver every single damn time
How'd it look? I stayed up past my bedtime to watch this stupid team into the 3rd quarter, but apparently missed the only fun quarter of the game?
I'm going to give a shout out to LaVine for his 1st half befire he sat. Shot looked pure and I thought he played a legitimately excellent defensive first half. Was our most effective defender, sans Keegan in that 1H
As long as Deebo, Lavine and Domas are on the floor, defense will be a struggle. Schroeder will be passable on defense still but if DC follows thru with his words, 3 of Nique, Keon, Carter, Keegan have to be on the floor….passing by with Schroeder as a part of this group.
Makes sense on paper but the egos from these vets create an issue. Perry has to make roster moves.
Makes sense on paper but the egos from these vets create an issue. Perry has to make roster moves.
BenchMob
Bench
“Defend 94 feet” is this years “Spray 3’s”
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