by Brown takes blame for Kings’ self-inflicted mistakes originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SACRAMENTO – After another game full of self-inflicted mistakes, lack of focus and determination, Kings coach Mike Brown saw no reason to yell at his players following Thursday’s 113-100 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Brown has been preaching pretty much the same thing to his players for weeks, but the results never really change.
Whether it’s due to not blocking, not caring about the paint, making better, cleaner passes, or simply not following the coaching staff’s game plans, the Kings are largely stuck in the same situation, and there isn’t one Signs that the situation is improving It’s almost that time.
“It is what it is,” Brown told reporters at the Golden 1 Center. “That’s why I didn’t yell at the boys. There’s nothing to complain about. You know exactly what we have to do. It’s about whether we do it or not. We didn’t do it tonight.
“It starts with me. Somehow, someway I have to figure out how to get her to do it.”
Of course, Brown had to take responsibility for his team’s mistakes. That’s what most good coaches do.
But for the Kings, the problems go far deeper than just the coaching staff.
From the start of training camp, Brown and his staff tried to make the Kings players aware of the details, although it didn’t seem to make much of an impression.
While Sacramento made a slight improvement in defending the paint – the Lakers scored 44 points in the paint compared to the 76 the Denver Nuggets threw at them a few days earlier – the Kings still can’t keep up with the physical aspects that their opponents brought with them.
This led to boxing failures and at the same time gave opposing teams the opportunity to take action on the boards. Three days after allowing a season-high 15 offensive rebounds against the Nuggets, the Kings followed up by giving up another 15 to the Lakers, resulting in 18 second-chance points.
There were also ball losses (17) and a lack of ball movement, which visibly frustrated the head coach.
“The way we played both defensively and offensively was not good,” Brown said. “They touched our paint whenever they wanted, they drove us whenever they wanted. They mistreated us on the boards.”
Because of all the mistakes the Kings made, Brown was forced to complete his timeouts much quicker than he had hoped. He had just one in the final 14 minutes of the game and took advantage with about four minutes left.
“To be really good in this league, you have to fight hard,” Brown said. “It is not easy and will never be easy. Sooner or later we just have to decide, no matter how tired we are physically, no matter how tired we are mentally, no matter what the officials say or don’t say, no matter what is going right or wrong… We have to decide to just give it up lying on the floor and trying like hell to play properly on both ends of the floor.
“Somehow we have to decide and decide who we want to be. Tonight was not a good performance on any level to make it clear to the Lakers and everyone else that we want to get back to where we think we should be in the standings.”
Brown didn’t rule out changes to the lineup, although point guard De’Aaron Fox gave the impression that it doesn’t matter who starts for the Kings. What matters most is the desire to get better.
“We have to go out there and execute the plan. If you just think about it [and] If you don’t, it doesn’t mean anything,” Fox said. “At some point, especially in this conference, you keep losing games like this, then we look back like we did last year and you’re on the outside looking in. We keep talking about what a good team we think we can be, but until we’re able to get consistent wins or be consistent as a team, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Download and follow the Deuce & Mo Podcast
