Kentavious Caldwell-Pope played 37 minutes for the Los Angeles Lakers in the win against the Sacramento Kings (115-94). During that time, the 28-year-old guard had 13 points, 10 rebounds and 3 assists. It was just the fourth time for him over the last seventeen games that he scored in double digits.
The team’s head coach Frank Vogel discussed postgame how Caldwell-Pope’s changed since LeBron James and Anthony Davis went out with injuries. He took the blame for the guard’s struggles lately and praised him for his performance versus the Kings.
“KCP’s been struggling and I want to take some blame for that. Because when AD and Bron go out, KCP’s role with those guys in the lineup is to defend and to hustle and to run the floor and knock down open shots when they come. And sometimes he gets a lot of them and sometimes he doesn’t and that’s okay. But just to play through that.
“With those guys out, I haven’t talked to KCP about this and like I said, it’s where I take blame, but I talked to him pregame tonight and said that we need him to play more of a scoring role with those guys out.
And I want him to be more aggressive both in catch and shoot, attacking off the bounce mid-range pull-ups, like whatever he needs to do to give us more offensively and he responded in a big-time way at a great first half, really set a tone for our group that we’re going to go after these guys with our offensive proficiency. He deserves a lot of credit for tonight’s win as well.”
This season, Caldwell-Pope is averaging 8.3 points, 2.4 rebounds and 1.5 assists per game for the reigning NBA champions.
