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Sacramento Kings: No love November

By Adi Brescic

(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)
(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images) /
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After their surprisingly impressive start to the season, things finally began to look up for the Sacramento Kings. But here we are in November, and suddenly, we’re back to familiarity.

The Sacramento Kings hit the ground running during the first month of the 2018-19 season. They ended October with a 5-3 record, with a quality win coming against the Oklahoma City Thunder and a five-game win streak that carried over into December with wins against the Memphis Grizzlies, Washington Wizards, Miami Heat (away), Orlando Magic (away), and the Atlanta Hawks (away).

Since then, however, the franchise has only won four games and has had multiple losing streaks. The Kings are 4-7 in that span, have had two different back-to-backs (three of the four games being on the road), had as many games on the road as they did at home, and it only gets worse when you see the teams they’ve had to go up against during this brutal schedule:

But wait, there’s more! Their last five games to close out the month include the Thunder, Jazz (away), Golden State Warriors (away), Jazz again and the Los Angeles Clippers. Why does Adam Silver hate the Kings?  What did they ever do to him?

Anyway, after this absurd stretch of games, the Kings now find themselves 10-11 on the season, 11th in the Western Conference, and have their longest losing streak of the year at three games. December won’t be any more generous to them because from Dec. 12-30, they’ll have 10 games where they’ll see a few of those same teams again — Timberwolves (twice), Lakers (twice), Thunder, Warriors, Grizzlies and Clippers.

Getting back to November though, we can’t just point fingers and blame the schedule-makers for Sacramento dropping seven games, because it wasn’t totally all their fault. The Kings have themselves blame. Their production has taken a hit. It’s not an extreme drop-off, but it’s a drop-off nonetheless.

For October, the Kings were in the middle of the pack. They were 14th in offensive rating (109.0) and 15th in defensive rating (108.6), which translated to the 15th best net rating (0.4). As for November, their offense dropped to 18th (107.6) and defense slipped all the way to 27th (112.1). That’s a net rating of -4.5. Only six teams have a worse net rating for the month of November. Not good.

I probably don’t have to go too deep into their defensive woes because this team just wasn’t going to be very good on that end regardless. The regression was inevitable. But for the offense, three things stood out:

  1. They’re attempting less 2s in favor of more 3s; Sacramento’s percentage of field goal attempts on 2-pointers dropped from 72.5 percent to 68.4 percent, while their percentage of 3-point attempts jumped from 27.5 percent to 31.6 percent.
  2. Points in the paint dropped; Kings were one of the best teams at scoring in the paint early in the season, and they still are. They scored 58.0 points in the paint, fourth-best among all teams. That number has dropped all the way to 51.8 points per game for November, which is still the eighth-best, but it’s something to monitor as we get deeper into the season.
  3. Buddy Hield‘s efficiency drop-off; Although Hield is still putting up practically the same stat line as he was the previous month, his shooting percentages have taken a slight dip. He’s shooting 45.3 percent from the floor in November compared to 52.2 percent in October, and went from 44.7 percent from 3 to 41.5 percent.

Again, none of this stuff is super alarming, but it doesn’t hurt to keep a close eye on it.

Something that is alarming, however, is the shaky relationship between Kings head coach Dave Joerger and the front office. There were already rumors recently about Sacramento and Joerger potentially parting ways due to how he’s been handling the development of Marvin Bagley III and other young players.

Not even a month later, The Athletic reported that Joerger kicked assistant general manager Brandon Williams out of his practice. A coaching change is the last thing this organization needs at this point.

To make matters even worse, Marvin Bagley III, who happens to be the team’s best rim protector and offensive rebounder, suffered an injury against the Clippers early in the fourth quarter Thursday night after he posted his third double-double (18 points and 10 rebounds) in his last five games.

Injuries suck, but they suck even more when it happens to a young player that was just starting to put together a solid rookie campaign. We can only hope it’s not a major injury that’ll force him to miss time.

Amidst all the fiasco, there was one positive takeaway, which came in the form of Bogdan Bogdanovic. The Serbian sniper is back from his injury and he’s put together a good stretch of basketball. In 10 games he’s averaging 15.1 points, 3.1 assists and 2.9 rebounds in 25.9 minutes per game while shooting 38.6 percent from 3.

He also had this sweet step-back jumper against the Clippers that pulled them within six points in the fourth quarter:

November hasn’t been kind to the Kings. Other than a couple wins and Bogdanovic’s succesful return, there hasn’t been a whole lot to cheer about.

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We can only hope things get turned around in December.

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