Highs and Lows: Sacramento Kings Get Thunderstruck in OKC
By Rafe Wong
After winning two straight games, the Sacramento Kings were manhandled today by the Oklahoma City Thunder, losing by a score of 110-94.
Listed down below are the highs and lows of today’s game pertaining to the Kings.
HIGHS
Skal Labissiere: On his 21st birthday, Skal Labissiere had himself a solid game today. For the day, Labissiere recorded 13 points and 4 rebounds while shooting 50% from the floor. Despite struggling earlier in the game (recording three fouls in the first quarter), Labissiere found a way to fight back against the Thunder’s stout interior defense. The Kings may not be a playoff team at the moment, but their young talent is something for Kings fans to be excited about.
Free-Throw Shooting: The Kings were able to take advantage of making their “free” points in today’s game as they made 19 of their 23 attempts from the free-throw line. The Kings’ offense was suffocated throughout the game by OKC, but at least they were able to make their free-throws.
Georgios Papagiannis: Georgios Papagiannis had his breakout game against the Thunder today as he was able to score 14 points while grabbing 11 rebounds, recording his first career NBA double-double. Today’s game showed why Vlade Divac, Kings’ General Manager, was so high on Papagiannis in last year’s draft. He has solid touch around the rim and the potential body to be an effective player on both sides of the floor. Hopefully, he can reach his potential going forward and Kings fans can see more games out of Papa G similar to today’s performance.
LOWS
Perimeter Shooting: The Kings’ perimeter shooting was just awful today as they made only 5 three-pointers out of their 21 attempts. In the last couple of weeks, the three-point shot has been the main part of the Kings’ offensive success, so it wasn’t surprising why the Kings struggled to score today. Bottom line, the Kings need to make their three-point shots going forward if they want their offense to succeed, and today’s game proves that notion.
Rebounding Game: The Oklahoma City Thunder outrebounded the Kings by a score of 49-35. Also, the Thunder won the offensive rebounding game by a score of 13-9. As a result of dominating the rebounding game, the Thunder were able to gain more opportunities to score the ball than the Kings, which ended up playing a part in how OKC was able to win in comfortable fashion.
Assist-Turnover Ratio: Like it was mentioned above, the Kings offense had a rough game today, and a reason for it was because the ball movement was limited and the Kings continue to turn the ball over at a moderate rate. For the day, the Kings as a collective whole recorded 16 assists and 12 turnovers for the contest, resulting in an assist-turnover ratio of 1.33. Protecting the ball and getting everyone involved on offense needed to be done in order for the Kings to be competitive, but unfortunately, they failed at both aspects in today’s contest.