Can George Karl’s undefeated Sacramento Kings beat L.A. tonight?

How good was last night? No, really, how good was that?

The Sacramento Kings

YouTube

page posted some cool behind the scenes stuff from George Karl’s debut. Great crowd last night, Sacramento.

Our own Kyle Robert has the full recap of last nights victory for you

here

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I was thoroughly impressed by a lot of what I saw. The obvious uptick in energy and effort was probably the most revealing. I don’t know how much of that you can attribute to George Karl, but it was nice to see.

Rudy Gay was efficient. DeMarcus Cousins was efficient (lets just forget about the nine turnovers for now). The bench foursome of Jason Thompson, Andre Miller, Omri Casspi, and Derrick Williams played extremely well.

If you exclude Carl Landry’s random five minutes as the starting power forward, Karl used a tight eight-man rotation, and everyone contributed. The Kings had 26 assists, tied for their third highest total of the season.

Before I move on to tonight’s game against the Los Angeles Clippers, I need to briefly mention the Kings 24 turnovers. I’m not worried about that number right now. It’s a new system, and a lot of those turnovers were via pass attempts. Obviously, that number needs to come down a great deal (and I think it will) but Karl needs to keep promoting passing, and I would expect that turnover number to remain fairly high as the Kings get used to what Karl wants them to do on offense.

Here is what George Karl had to say after the game.

Beating an undermanned Celtics team at home is one thing. Beating the Los Angeles Clippers in L.A. on the second night of a back-to-back is another.

The Clippers are having a strange year. They haven’t been quite as good as a lot of people had predicted prior to the season. Blake Griffin is out with a right elbow injury. They have serious depth issues. And yet, they are still 36-19 and are currently riding a three game win streak that included impressive victories over Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

The Clippers only played eight guys in Thursday nights 119-112 win over the Spurs, and one of them was the corpse of Hedo Turkoglu. The Kings are great at getting opponents into foul trouble, that, along with the Clippers short bench, could make up for the ‘second night of a back-to-back’ factor.

Darren Collison is currently listed as doubtful, but his presence would certainly help if he were able to go. Ray McCallum and Andre Miller filled in admirably last night, but Marcus Smart isn’t Chris Paul, and Collison always brings it against his old team.

This is a winnable game against a good team. A competitive effort should be expected. I’m looking forward to it.

As always, check back in to A Royal Pain after tonight’s game for our postgame coverage.

Sacramento Kings at Los Angeles Clippers

Where: Staples Center – Los Angeles, CA

When: 7:00 PM Pacific, 10:00 PM Eastern

Broadcast: Comcast Sportsnet California

Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM

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