The Sacramento Kings hosted the Toronto Raptors Wednesday in its first preseason game. One of the biggest things to keep an eye on in this game was Sacramento’s defense – something head coach Doug Christie has been preaching since media day.
The Raptors won and put up 130 points.
The Raptors finished with 32 assists on 44 made shots. So, the Kings did not disrupt Toronto’s flow.
The largest lead for the Raptors was 25. Sacramento went long stretches without being able to stop anything.
Toronto shot 54% from three and 48% from the field. Draining 20 threes on 54% shows the Kings were lost on rotations and closeouts.
After the game, Christie was blunt about the team’s performance on that side of the ball, acknowledging the defensive breakdowns that gave the Raptors confidence. Those two connected forces (breakdowns and giving opponents confidence) in the game of basketball have been a piece of the Kings identity for years and Christie stated his goal is to stop that.
“Ever since I’ve come back here [to Sacramento] it’s kind of been the story, but we’re going to stop that story,” he said.
Christie has been harping on his guys to pick up 94 feet on defense and when asked how his team did with that, he broke it down into percentages of possessions they picked up full court.
“They were in the first half 30 percent so that’s unacceptable and we talked about it – 85 is the number. So that means out of all of the opportunities that you get, when someone turns around with the basketball, they know what you ate for breakfast,” Christie said.
The Raptors had the Kings for dinner at Golden 1 Center Wednesday night. Shout out to Zach LaVine for putting effort in on defense in the first half (he didn’t play in the second) and the third stringers (Dylan Cardwell, Maxime Raynaud, Nique Clifford, Devin Carter and Isaiah Stevens) for showing fight in the fourth quarter and making the game competitive, but it was already out of hand and as a team, the defense was already a collective failure by that point.
Christie broke it down further by saying that out of the whole game, he got the identity he wants out of the team for only a quarter and a half.
“The consistency of what we expect needs to be able to be at a higher level for a longer period of time,” Christie said.
Hey, but is still early, right? Right? The Kings will get another shot at showing signs of improvement on defense Friday against the Portland Trail Blazers.