SACRAMENTO – A one-point loss to the 2023 NBA champions wasn’t enough to satisfy Kings coach Mike Brown.
If anything, Brown seemed more bothered by the close defeat than he had been in a few of the blowout losses that his squad has endured.
That’s because of how it all went down.
Sacramento entered Monday's game against the Denver Nuggets riding a three-game winning streak and playing some of its best defense of the 2024-25 NBA season, but that all went out the window in one fell swoop because of a litany of errors that the Kings made.
The Nuggets bullied the Kings around for much of the first half, put together a ridiculously lopsided performance in the paint then made all the right plays down the stretch to pull out a 130-129 victory at Golden 1 Center.
And Brown wasn’t happy about any of it.
“There was a level of physicality that we didn't start with at the beginning of the game,” Brown said. “There was a level of focus that we didn't start with at the beginning of the game. And again, that's where we as a group have to figure out, ‘Are we going to really embrace the details?’ ”
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The breakdowns came from just about everywhere.
The Kings had their best night scoring in the paint with 58 points, but compared to the Nuggets' astonishing 76 points in the paint, Sacramento’s effort clearly was lacking.
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Denver also had a 55-42 rebounding edge, with 15 of the boards coming on the offensive end.
Then there was the endless onslaught of back cuts that paved the way for the Nuggets to make clean passes and get easy buckets.
“It’s alertness, it’s being locked into all the details,” Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox said. “When [Nikola] Jokić catches the ball, everybody on the team is going to either screen or cut, so you have to make them go up the floor, make them cut through your body. At the beginning of the game, we weren’t doing that. Everything was way too easy.”
To be fair, the Kings cleaned things up in the second half, but by then the damage was done.
The ending wasn’t great, either.
Sacramento led by 10 points with four minutes to go, then went dry offensively and was outscored 16-7.
“If we could have kept them on pace for 50 points in the paint, we probably win this game by 10, 15 points,” Fox said. “But we were really bad in the first half. We ended up fighting back, giving ourselves a chance to win, and we didn’t execute down the stretch.”
Until and unless the Kings do a better job of the small things, the big picture for the team is going to become muddier and muddier.
“This is where our team needs to grow sooner than later. We have to lock in,” Brown said. “We have to lock into the details. We got backcut more times in this one game than probably we got back cut all year, and it's because our guy on the bottom weak side ball watched.
“The thing about it is, you guys won't see any of that in the stat sheets. You won't see back cut after back cut in the stat sheet. Until our guys understand that it's about embracing the details for 48 minutes, we're going to be a good team, but we're not going to be where we need to go.”
