The Kings are promising, but need adjustments after their season-opening loss

The Sacramento Kings' season opener brought out some positive things, but also some growing pains for Mike Brown as DeMar DeRozan was integrated into the system. The team did some things well on defense, like holding the Minnesota Timberwolves to 32 paint points and forcing them into 17 turnovers. On offense, the Kings were able to build a double-digit lead and the five core players were outstanding. A last-second three-pointer by Keegan Murray bounced off the rim and resulted in a two-point loss.

After the game, head coach Mike Brown talked about the areas of improvement he wants to focus on: late-game shot selection, adapting the offense to DeMar DeRozan's mid-range game, better rotation management and reducing core players' minutes.

Offensive style changes

The Kings may not utilize the dribble handoff as much to accommodate DeRozan's scoring and playmaking abilities:

“We might not run DHO as much because you have a guy like DeMar and he shoots. It's great to have the ball in his hands. It's great to have the ball in Malik's hands. “It's great to have the ball in Fox's hands,” he said.

DeRozan finished the game with 26 points and Brown acknowledged that the addition of his elite mid-range game would obviously change the team's shot distribution. This could then reduce the number of three-point attempts, and he said he was happy with that.

“You have another guy who orders you to touch the ball a little bit more. And you could see that DeMar looked pretty good, especially in the beginning when he declined. His game is in the middle of the pack,” Brown said. “He’s an elite, middle-class guy. So he’s going to take a lot of shots and that will probably take some away from the three, which I’m okay with.”

The Kings made 29 three-pointers and the Timberwolves made 50. The Kings also had 21 assists and an average of 28 per game last season.

This correlates to a larger discussion about shot selection, in which Brown said, “So not necessarily from a DHO perspective, but there were opportunities for us to touch the paint and spray the ball probably five to six times more than we did.” did tonight, and.” That’s where I think the 35-plus threes would have come from.”

Brown emphasized improving shooters' drive-and-kickouts rather than taking contested shots, compared to players like Rudy Gobert.

This played a role later on.

After Ellis got a steal and hit a hard floater. Brown pointed out that the sequence after that was crucial to the outcome, saying, “I thought our next three possessions were really tough. We shot some hard, hard, hard twos. After Keon he shot a hard two-pointer. And those two instances against a really good team made the difference in the ball game. Against a good team you have to be methodical and not just play quickly. I feel good when I play fast. But when I say you're methodical in your approach, you're not going to upset a good team by making tough 2-pointers, especially late in the game.”

Rotation and minute management

The coach expressed clear concern about the heavy minutes played by his key players, noting that this was a constant area of ​​adjustment.

“You could see from the minutes that I was still not happy with my rotation. I don't want DeMar to average 43 minutes per game. I don't want Keegan to play an average of 43 minutes per game. …I also don't want Domas to be 38, and I don't want Fox to be 37. That's something I need to continue to work on with the group, to figure out what's going to be good for us in rotation in the future, and that might be take some time. “

The main issue here is that the bench needs to be a lot better than it was in Game 1. Kevin Huerter (technically a starter), Trey Lyles, Doug McDermott, Alex Len and Keon Ellis shot a combined 3-for-11 from the field.

Defensive approach

While he was pleased with the performance on defense, Brown spoke about the need for better technique, particularly how his team should defend without fouling.

“We always talk to our guys about leading with their chest, leading with their chest, leading with their chest. If they can do it, you can just live with it. … We just have to continue to lead with our chest and stay solid while trying to be physical. If we can do that, we’ll have a lot of really good results,” he said.

Fewer DHOs, threes, and the inclusion of DeRozan will be interesting to watch in the first month of the season because that is very different from what this team has been the last two seasons. It's good to see Brown being open about what needs to be improved. He knows the tweaks that need to be made and given that it was a close game against a top team from the West, it was overall positive despite the loss.