Sacramento Kings head coach Mike Brown wasn’t very happy with his team’s defensive effort during last night’s 136-134 home loss vs. the Los Angeles Lakers.
(via Sacramento Kings):
“The bottom line is obviously we have to figure out somehow someway to stop people. Defensively we are not good, at all. To have a team come in here and score 136 points on 61% shooting and 70 points in the paint, that’s not good. I’m not sure if we collectively as a group understand how important it is to try to fight like heck from the beginning of the game to the end of the game defensively. I give Thomas Bryant a lot of credit, he kicked our behind. And the tough part about it is, we didn’t give Domantas [Sabonis] a ton of help down there. Keegan [Murray] plays 30 minutes and has zero rebounds. Harrison [Barnes] has a load of a guy that he’s guarding in LeBron [James], and LeBron’s out on the perimeter. So it’s a little tougher for him to get defensive rebounds, but we gotta get something from Keegan.
“We can’t have him on the floor for 30 minutes and get zero rebounds, especially down the stretch of a tough ball game. But defensively, to give up the 70 points in the paint, it’s tough to swallow with them not even hitting a three in the second half. We keep preaching to our guys, ‘Protect the paint, protect the paint, protect the paint. Come early, come early, come early.’ And it has to be to a point where guys are gonna go real early and give up a three, and look at me and say, ‘I did what you told me to ask.’ I’m hoping somebody will do that, but somehow someway we have to figure out collectively as a group how to defend, and more importantly than that, we have to commit to defending for 48 minutes. Because let’s face it, we can score, but we’re terrible defensively.”
