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<\/a><\/p>\nLast week I mentioned how one of the few things I was looking forward to for the remainder of the season was seeing how Keegan Murray would do down the stretch of the season now that he\u2019s back from injury. Well, that didn\u2019t last long as now Murray is dealing with yet another ankle injury. This one is supposedly more minor and only expected to keep him out for two more weeks, but at this point, they should not be in any rush to bring him back. Let him get healthy and hopefully come back stronger than ever for next season. It\u2019s been an incredibly disappointing season for Keegan but the last thing we\u2019d want is for him to get any lingering issues from bringing him back too early.<\/p>\n
Clifford the big purple dog<\/p>\n
Nique\u2019s had an interesting rookie season and this week was no different.\u00a0 Against Memphis, Nique had an all around good game, scoring 12 points to go with 6 rebounds, 6 steals (the second most by a Kings rookie since Kenny Smith had 7 in 1988) and 5 assists.\u00a0 He followed that up with a 15 point, 4 steal game against Houston, then a 13 points 8 rebound, 7 assist, 2 steal game in a win against Dallas (where he shot jut 6-19) and then had maybe his best overall game of the season against the Lakers with 26 points, 7 rebounds, 4 assists a steal and a block while shooting 11-18 from the field.\u00a0 For the season, Nique is now averaging 7.3 points, 3.3 rebounds, 1.9 assists and 0.9 steals while shooting 40.7% from the field and 32.1% from three.\u00a0 He does a little bit of everything on both ends of the court, showcasing very good defensive and playmaking instincts.\u00a0 The most worrying thing is his inefficiency as a scorer, as he\u2019s only shooting 37.2% from the field in 12 games as a starter.\u00a0 He\u2019s definitely streaky on that end of the floor as showcased by varying good and bad performances, but he will need to get more consistent over the future.\u00a0 The nice thing about him is that he finds ways to contribute even when he isn\u2019t scoring, so I think he\u2019ll be able to carve out a role for himself just based on that.\u00a0 I also think that he\u2019s been thrown into the deep end of the pool and might be a little bit out of his depth right now, but that should hopefully help long term even if there\u2019s some struggling to start.\u00a0 Nique would probably look a lot better on a better team where he isn\u2019t asked to do as much, but he\u2019s also getting way more opportunity and time on the court right now than he probably would if this team was good, so hopefully he\u2019s making the most of it and he can be a nice piece for this team in the future.<\/p>\n
Nobody asked for this \u201cSprite Stat Tracker\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe this is just me finding things annoying but this latest gimmick the Kings broadcast is doing of making the games try to look like an NBA 2K game where the players names are highlighted whenever they have the ball and the shot charts and everything else are on the screen is stupid.\u00a0 I understand it\u2019s likely a paid sponsorship thing with Sprite but still, it doesn\u2019t need to be there for the whole game.\u00a0 The broadcast as a whole needs a serious revamp, but that\u2019s a conversation for another time.<\/p>\n
Basketball with Stakes<\/p>\n
I actually watched a couple of games this week between some of the NBA\u2019s top teams, and what a difference watching basketball with actual stakes is compared to this Kings season.\u00a0 Both games involved the Oklahoma City Thunder as they took on the Detroit Pistons and the Denver Nuggets.\u00a0 Against Detroit, the Thunder didn\u2019t have SGA but they still hung in there thanks to their excellent supporting cast.\u00a0 I had a couple takeaways from that game: Detroit is the real deal and Daryl Morey is going to look like an idiot for giving up on Jared McCain.\u00a0 The Pistons are currently #1 in the Eastern Conference and their two best players (Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren) are both under 25 years old.\u00a0 Cade is definitely the engine that makes this team run, but the supporting cast just fits really well. Tobias Harris is still out there doing his thing as a tertiary scorer, Ausar Thompson isn\u2019t quite as good as Amen but is still a defensive menace. Duren is one of the best young bigs in the league and is a force on both ends of the court.\u00a0 The Pistons are 2nd in the NBA in Defensive Rating (the Thunder are 1st) and have already passed up their win total from last year (44) with a month and a half to go in the season. What a turnaround for a team that finished with just 14 wins two seasons ago.\u00a0 Rebuilds don\u2019t have to take forever, and the Pistons (and Thunder) are proof.<\/p>\n
On the Thunder\u2019s side, Jared McCain has fit in like a glove since coming over from Philly. You may remember how McCain looked like an early lock for Rookie of the Year for Philadelphia last season before unfortunately tearing his meniscus and missing the rest of the season.\u00a0 This season, he barely got off the bench for the 76ers as VJ Edgecombe got more opportunity, but the 76ers still should have found a way to get him involved. Instead, they sent him to the Thunder for a late 1st and three second round picks.\u00a0 At the time Daryl Morey called this \u201cselling high\u201d, which I guess it could have been if the 76ers weren\u2019t going to be playing him, but he looks awesome in Oklahoma City, and is averaging 11.8 points on 47.7% from the field and 42.9% from three in 19.4 minutes off the bench. When you have a stupid amount of assets like the Thunder have, you can exploit buy low opportunities like this.\u00a0 The rich get richer.<\/p>\n
The other game I watched was the Thunder vs. Nuggets. I admittedly only watched part of this one after I had gotten an alert that Nikola Jokic had gotten into a fight after Lu Dort tripped him. Fight was too strong a word, but Jokic looked as angry as I\u2019ve ever seen him, and to be fair, he had cause as Dort did intentionally trip him which could have caused a major injury.\u00a0 It was a dirty play, and Dort was rightly ejected.\u00a0 That game ended up going to overtime, with both teams missing big shots at the end of regulation (SGA was spectacularly blocked by Christian Braun on his game winning attempt and Cameron Johnson missed a wide open corner three on the other end) but OKC was able to get the win in overtime even as SGA sat (it was his first game back from injury and OKC wanted to be careful with his minutes).\u00a0 The Nuggets aren\u2019t at full strength, but they\u2019re still a team I would not want to be playing in the playoffs, especially if they get their weapons back before then. Jokic is still the best player in the world, and incidents like this one are going to spark some intrigue heading into the playoffs.<\/p>\n
You may have noticed I spent more time talking about these two random games not involving the Kings than I did about the Kings this week, and that\u2019s because it\u2019s much easier to talk about things that spark joy, and good basketball is still very fun to watch and it\u2019s still out there.\u00a0 I\u2019m very much looking forward to the actual NBA playoffs, even if the Kings won\u2019t be among the participants.<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
Upcoming Schedule:<\/p>\n
Tuesday, March 3rd vs. Phoenix Suns
\nThursday, March 5th vs. New Orleans Pelicans
\nSunday, March 8th vs. Chicago Bulls<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kings finally won a couple of games, beating two fellow bottom-feeders on the road and avoiding what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3792],"tags":[7,3210,4056,6,854,986,477,4055],"class_list":{"0":"post-635288","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento-kings","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-keegan-murray","10":"tag-kings","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-nique-clifford","13":"tag-sacramento","14":"tag-sacramento-kings","15":"tag-sacramentokings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}