Sacramento has suffered from offensive lulls throughout four-game skid

Nov 25, 2024, 3:50 PM | Updated: Nov 26, 2024, 12:26 pm

SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 18: De'Aaron Fox #5 of the Sacramento Kings complains to official...

De'Aaron Fox #5 of the Sacramento Kings complains to official Pat Fraher during their game against the Atlanta Hawks in the second half at Golden 1 Center on November 18, 2024 in Sacramento, California. (Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

(Photo by Ezra Shaw/Getty Images)

BY BRENDEN NUNES

Sactown Sports writer

For the first time in their 2024-25 NBA season, the Sacramento Kings have recorded three straight losses. Monday night’s 130-109 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder extended that streak to four largely due to a 22-point third quarter and 25-point final frame from the Kings.

In their two games prior, a road game against the Los Angeles Clippers and a faceoff against the Jordi Fernandez-led Brooklyn Nets in Golden 1 Center featured unfortunate opening quarters.

Friday’s loss at the newly opened Inuit Dome featured the return of DeMar DeRozan and Domantas Sabonis, who both missed a few games prior with back tightness/soreness.

In that showing, they tallied a season-worst 12 points in a quarter on 4/21 from the field and 1/9 from three with five turnovers. Sunday night was a better offensive performance, but their defense waned in the opening moments.

The Kings scored 29 points on 10/13 from the field, but five turnovers led to 10 of Brooklyn’s 37-point quarter. Before every game, the coaching staff labels certain opposing players as “hot guys,” meaning they warrant aggressive closeouts to chase them off the three-point line, and they share that game plan with the players.

On Sunday, they displayed multiple blunders on “hot guys.”

“Right now, our level of physicality and attention to detail is not quite there. In the first quarter alone, their two hot players had three made threes because we closed short with our hands down,” Coach Brown said. “It’s a small detail. People will just see the made three, but they don’t understand that this is the game plan against those guys, and this is how you have to stop those three. And so, that little detail right there, we have to embrace it. We have to embrace what the game plan is.”

Furthering the point, the staff attempted to implement unique first-possession plays in the last two games, but the players didn’t execute.

“We walk through it in our walkthrough, and then we draw it up before the game, and two games in a row right now, we haven’t executed it right. So, our mindset has to be better going into these games on both sides of the floor in order for us to not let teams feel comfortable right away.”

Here are the two plays Brown mentioned.

“We walk through it in our walkthrough, and then we draw it up before the game, and two games in a row right now, we haven’t executed it right.”

The Kings looked pretty lost in both instances. https://t.co/rfp3dosFWf pic.twitter.com/zlDCAhaU6F

— Brenden Nunes (@BrendenNunesNBA) November 25, 2024

De’Aaron Fox was asked about the failed execution on those possessions after Sunday’s 108-103 loss to the Nets. “Just attention to detail,” he said. “All five guys have to be ready and just remember. We write it up on the board, we have to be able to go out there and execute the play.”

They are a talented enough team to come back from overwhelming deficits, but their lackluster start to games is making games harder than necessary.

“The sense of urgency is there once we’re down,” DeRozan said Sunday. “We play hard, we play aggressive, we do all the things that we need to be doing, but we do it once we’re down 10, 12, 15 points, and we can’t live like that. That’s a dangerous game to live when you start out like that.”

“If we change (the slow first quarters and halves) around, we could’ve easily got three to four to five games back, and we’d be having a different conversation,” he continued. “But we’ve just got to turn it around. It sucks to lose, but got to get ready for a great team tomorrow night.”

Early into the game against Oklahoma City, Malik Monk’s first game back from an ankle injury, Sacramento had the makings of a bounce-back game. By halftime, they had 62 points on 53.2 percent from the field, while the Thunder had 63 points on 60 percent from the field at that point.

I was shaping up to be a tight one down the wire, despite the Kings being on a back-to-back and the Thunder coming off a rare four days of rest, but the game slowed down, and Sacramento’s offense went stale in the third.

Twenty-two points in the third quarter and 25 in the final frame for Sacramento, while their opposition never scored less than 30 in a frame.

“We kind of went away from what was working, and we should have just stuck to it,” Sabonis said after Monday’s loss. They had 17 assists in the first half but just seven in the second. The 15-4 run they allowed to close the third turned a once one-point lead into a 12-point deficit that they could never recover from.

“It was also because we were running different things, and we should have just stuck to it,” the All-Star big man continued.

Maybe it has to do with Sabonis, DeRozan, and Monk’s staggered returns, but the Kings have to be able to put together closer to 48 minutes of highly competitive basketball in the competitive and deep Western Conference.

There’s not much time to dwell on the losses, which can be a positive if they can string together some wins. The Kings are headed to Minnesota with a chance to get their first win against the Timberwolves (8-8) who are having similar struggles, but have already beat Sacramento two times in 2024-25.