You know the old saying, "Winning cures everything?" That is 100% true. When your team is winning, it fixes a lot of problems.
However, winning can also delude the mind and make people forget the flaws that still exist with a certain team. One could argue that this is what has happened with the Sacramento Kings over the last few weeks.
After starting the season a lackluster 13-19, the Kings rattled off seven straight wins to push themselves to 20-19 and ninth in the unforgiving Western Conference.
All that winning made them forget the issues that caused them to go 13-19 in the first place. However, the Milwaukee Bucks provided them with a harsh reality check.
The Sacramento Kings need more size
On Tuesday, the Bucks (who share a weird streak stat with the Kings) dispatched the Kings by a score of 130-115, ending the team's win streak at seven games.
The Kings ended up being without their dynamic combo guard Malik Monk, who ended up being a late scratch because of a groin injury he had been dealing with. However, his absence had little to do with the Kings' inability to slow down Giannis Antetokounmpo and Brook Lopez.
The twin tower tandem combined for 54 points on 22-for-38 (57.9%) shooting from the floor. More than anything, their dominance was a microcosm of this roster's biggest flaw: their lack of size.
The Kings may have been playing some great basketball of late, but it doesn't change the fact that they only have three guys over 6'8 (Domantas Sabonis, Keegan Murray, and Trey Lyles) in their main rotation and that the only seven-footer who ever sees the floor for them is Alex Len.*
(*Sidebar: Len is not a consistent fixture in the Kings' rotation. This season, he has only appeared in 29 of their 40 games, and even then, he only averages 7.3 minutes in the games he does participate in.)
The Bucks, a team that has two seven-footers in their starting lineup, are a perfect foil to the Kings, and in the first half, they dismantled us in the interior – outscoring Sacramento 34-18 in points in the paint. The Kings started to figure some stuff out in the second half (holding the Bucks to just 12 points in that category), but by then, Milwaukee had already built up their lead enough to help them successfully cross the finish line.
The Kings winning streak was a major bright spot, one that probably saved their season. But yesterday's loss to the Bucks served as a strong reminder that the Kings need to prioritize adding functional size to their roster at the deadline so that they can be better prepared to handle the titans littered across various NBA rosters.