Sacramento Kings loss to lowly Portland Trail Blazers is a major red flag

Basketball is a funny sport. One day, you're up, and one day, you're down.

The Sacramento Kings are well aware of this sentiment, as it was just a few days ago that we were singing kumbaya after our prized free agent addition, DeMar DeRozan, looked marvelous in his debut against one of our greatest rivals.

Unfortunately, now, the vibes have completely shifted. On Sunday, the Kings put up a stinker, falling to the projected Western Conference bottom-feeder Portland Trail Blazers 105-85.

Despite it being just a preseason game, the effort was so poor that head coach Mike Brown felt the need to voice his frustrations with the team in his post-game press conference.

“Getting beat by a young team because of how hard they played, how physical they played, was a great learning experience,” Brown told reporters at Golden 1 Center. “I wanted to play our starters at the end of the game tonight so that they could try to feel what it’s like to play in a whole game, but they did not work with me in that situation to be able to play. And we’re down by 20, so I’m not going to risk that in a preseason game. You have to give Portland a lot of credit just on how hard they played tonight.”

Why Sacramento Kings fans should be worried?

Long-term readers of the website should know that we try our best not to take away too much from the preseason. Just because your team wins/loses to a team in the preseason doesn't mean that the same result will follow in the regular season.

But we can learn a lot about our team's strengths and weaknesses from watching these games, and if the Blazers beating was any indication, effort/physicality may be a problem for us this season.

As Brown's comments touched upon, the Kings were getting out hustled and outworked all night. This is an issue because, as an offensively slanted team, the Kings don't have a ton of natural talent (relative to the rest of the league) on defense. So, they need to rely a ton on effort and physicality if they plan on being respectable in that area.

As we saw last season, playing hard and buying into what the coach is preaching can take you a long way on the defensive side of the floor. Despite having the worst opponent shooting luck in the NBA last season, the Kings still managed to put together the 14th-ranked defense (in terms of Defensive Rating) in the NBA.

Obviously, with their current roster, the Kings will be a better offensive team than defensive team. But historically speaking, to make a deep playoff run, you need to have either an elite offense, elite defense, or be balanced (top 10) on both sides of the ball.

Unless the Kings repeat their offensive success from 2022-23, they will need to be top 10 on both sides of the ball to have a legitimate chance of making some noise in the loaded Western Conference. But to do that, they can't replicate the effort level that caused Brown to criticize his team after Sunday's dreadful loss.

Hopefully, this game serves as a wake-up call before the start of the season.