On Saturday, the night the Toronto Raptors officially retired Vince Carter's uniform, the Sacramento Kings fell to the now 2-5 team by a score of 128-131.
This game represented an easy chance for the Kings to earn a fourth straight victory against a downtrodden and short-handed basketball team. However, the team struggled to finish the job after forcing the game to go into overtime.
The final five minutes of the game revealed a potential dark truth: the Kings' clutch offense may not be as strong as we think it is.
Sacramento Kings bad clutch offense
Heading into the season, many people (us included) had high hopes for the Kings' clutch offense. The main reason for this is that the team touts the 2022-23 NBA Clutch Player of the Year (De'Aaron Fox) and a two-time top-3 finisher for the award (DeMar DeRozan).
Surely, a team with so much clutch firepower wouldn't have any problem scoring on the team that ranks 30th in defensive rating, right? But alas, the Kings posted an abysmal 80 offensive rating in the extra frame (per NBA.com). For reference, that would be the worst team offensive rating in NBA history if that happened for an entire season.
When you watch the tape, you will see that the Kings' offense was unimaginative. The entire five minute finale was spent trying to get Fox and DeRozan going against a favorable matchup (in this case, Gradey Dick) in isolation.
In theory, this is a sound strategy. Find the weak point in the other team's defense, and then use that to create advantages for the offense. Unfortunately, all DeRozan and Fox could do was take contested pull-up jumpers.
Two caveats to add to this. First, to his credit, Dick did a phenomenal job of defending both DeRozan and Fox. Second, the Kings wouldn't be in this situation if the Raptors didn't shoot 45.9% from three and they didn't shoot 25%.
Regardless, a healthy offense – whether it be in clutch time or not – is one that generates a high volume of paint touches. In overtime, the Kings scored zero points in the paint. Meanwhile, the Raptors scored eight.
To be fair, this is just one overtime game, and we would all probably be talking differently about this whole thing if the tough shots that DeRozan and Fox took went in like they have so many times before. Other teams may also have an easier target to hunt than Dick.
But this Kings' clutch offense isn't nearly as bulletproof as we think. They need to find ways to play with their normal, highly efficient offensive flow while also taking advantage of DeRozan and Fox's late-game gifts (like they are normally able to do for the first 43 minutes). Fortunately, the Kings still have 76 games to work this out.