Doug Christie brings new voice to Kings, but will that be enough?

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LOS ANGELES — “The first thing is: We have enough.”

That was the message that new head coach Doug Christie had given to the Kings’ players after taking over the big chair in the wake of Mike Brown being fired. Christie emphasized it several times Saturday night, “And this is a message that I said to them — there is enough in this locker room.”

Christie brings a new voice to Sacramento, but he takes over the same roster — one very light on plus defenders.

That was evident from the opening tip in Christie’s debut game as head coach — the Lakers scored 40 points on 73.9% shooting in the first quarter Saturday night. In the third quarter, when the Lakers leaned into an inverted pick-and-roll, they scored 42 points on 75% shooting.

“I mean, everything felt great, other than giving up two 40-point quarters and fouling entirely too much,” DeMar DeRozan said of the first game under Christie.

“Obviously, giving up two 40-point quarters will never help you win the game,” De’Aaron Fox added.

Like the last five games Brown coached, the Kings lost Christie’s debut, 132-122.

With those six straight losses the Kings have fallen to 13-19 on the season. Sacramento sits 12th in the West and is staring up at the play-in — and in the deep Western Conference, a team will likely have to be above .500 just to be in the top 10 and make it to the play-in.

Already six games below .500, there is no grace period for Christie or this team to break in the new coach.

“I don’t accept a grace period, I expect to win every time we step out on the the ball floor, because there’s enough in the locker room to make it happen,” Christie said.

Is there?

There is on offense, where the Kings are once again top-10 in the league. Fox, DeRozan, and Domantas Sabonis form a trio of bucket-getters that can put up points against any team.

However, the team is 17th in the league on defense this season — and that ranking was a credit to Brown, a defense-first coach who prioritized that end of the court. The Kings were middle of the pack defensively last season (14th) and were 24th in the league the season their top-ranked offense carried them to the No. 3…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/doug-christie-brings-voice-kings-125900308.html

Author : NBC Sports

Publish date : 2024-12-29 12:59:00

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