Kings looking real good early, but did also look good early against United and got smashed.

And next minute it's a one point game.

Zikarsky is going to be very good. Kings are so poor defensively, starting with Noi.

Zikarsky the teenager intimidating the kings. Bolden does nothing but sit out on the perimeter. He could be so much better

@Bol, Rosen and Rucker are telling me Bolden is being under played. Lol, need more Hunter. Kings defensively are a rabble and missing open looks

Kings coach had got to go.

Shakes head, kings bad after starting on fire. There is no defensive leader, and some poor defenders with big names and probably egos. Kings might fall into the six but are not challenging
Bullets looking good as a team, Norton defensively been a rock, great pick up.

Jackomas could get more out of this Sydney roster than Mahmoud.

I think it's unfair on putting everything on the coach, you can carry one or two bad defenders but not a team full of them. Adams just driving to the rack all time when things are tough isn’t offence either.

Noi couldn't defend my mother

For all we know, your mother is Sheryl Swoopes Dunkman. No shame if Noi couldn't guard Swoopes.

My mother needs a walking stick, kings get rolling in the last when Noi goes to the bench. Refs deciding this game.

Wtf is Schueller playing Baynes in crunch time. Sheesh. Get Rocco on ffs, Baynes is a turkey.

Why change the line up that got you back into the game, go straight back to iso offence and poor D with Noi getting teched

Kings with two miserable home losses in a row. Looking forward to what Bogut says about this on his pod.

Also, Schueller badly needs a mansierre. Sorry.

Baynes has been very good down the stretch.

Valentine, Adams have had poor years, Hogg injured, coach wants to play every player, it's bye bye kings.
Kings were best and got back into game when Adams, Toohey, Galloway, Bruce and Hunter were on the floor, two minutes left and he makes three subs. In a game of runs you got play who is doing best, stop subbing so much and reward defenders. Hopefully the coach is not coaching players egos.

Bullets should be very happy, Sobey very good, no brain fades, everyone else did what was required, Scott and Norton the pick though all bigs contributed. Brisbane certainly have improved immensely this season and have a reasonable squad

Sydney played trash but almost another epic choke by Brissy. Good to see Prather back in the league he seems to be moving well.

Surely Glover is gone if the coach is still there next season. Another player who did well in his limited minutes but then gets dragged after doing some good things.

We couldn't guard an NBL1 team at the moment. I don't know how much of the blame goes on the coach - we lost one of the best perimeter defenders in the league (Simon) and one of the most versatile defenders (Cooks), and swapped a good defender in Walton Jr for an out-of-shape Adams who is getting cooked by 2nd/3rd string PGs regularly.

^^^^
Exactly

Turn-takers league.

Great job by the Bullets. Thought Sobey played one of his better games with not so much hero ball. Prather could be a bit of an X factor down the stretch, the bigs were solid and the bench was excellent.

As for the Kings, wow. They are a mess. Adams is clearly not what he was 2 years ago, Valentine is a total bust, Hogg obviously didn't play but he’s not been the player he was in Cairns, the team defence is atrocious and the chemistry is lousy.

Then you get to the coach, who has been an unmitigated disaster. For those posters above who don’t think he deserves the lions share of the blame, wrong. His rotations are ridiculous, his half court system, if you can call it that, is third-rate and easily defended, he doesn’t make adjustments and it’s obvious that a bunch of players don’t believe in him. And he is terrible coaching D. In short, he’s been a giant mistake - the Kings got lucky with Weaver and Buford but they went to the G-League well once too often. Abdelfattah has done as poor a job with the amount of talent he has on the roster as Andrew Gaze did a few years ago. He’ll be gone at the end of the season.

Believe it or not, the Kings are now in a position where they could actually miss the playoffs. Unlikely, but that tells you how far this team has fallen.

Angus - you didn't have Simon 2 years ago when Adams played and yet the Kings won. Then it was a team focused on winning the championship and not a bunch of individuals brought in for promotional purposes as a pathway to the NBA. It's all about glorifying individual plays now - who cares if the team loses. Glover wins them the championship and gets rewarded by sitting at the end of the bench? I'd say he'll leave regardless of the coach - he got signed (and burnt) by CP.

Also Adams needs reliable shooters around him to operate well, that was one of the reasons why he didn't make it in the EL - the team, Red Star, didn't have knock down shooters at that time so Adams wasn't impactful and got cut. Not sure he has this with the current Kings' line ups too - yes they can put up 3pointers but there is always time and place, not just chucking them up. The teams last two years were more efficient in that regard - put the pressure on the rim as the first option. With the structure they play now (5 out) they don't have anyone down low most of the time - Cooks with DJ/Martin (Soares) worked really well in that regard.

And the coach will not be dismissed simply because of the money - too expansive to let him go.

yeah not a fan of just punting coaches, but it is clear he needs to go.

for all we know, he might turn out to be a very good coach in the NBA style of play - he's just not very good in the more Euro-style NBL

All this season has done is made me respect what we were able to do last season even more - three new imports, retain the core, and win another title. It's not easy to do and requires copious amounts of luck, and this season has shown that - we didn't get our imports right, magnified by the loss of Cooks/DJ.

Adams was a no-brainer to bring back based on his first tour of duty, but as I said above he's just not in shape. Yeah spacing isn't great, offense could be less predictable etc. sure, but he is not the same player athletically. The Kings intro video at every home game kicks off with the dunk Adams made off his own FT miss to win the game against the Bullets in his first season with us - I'm not even sure he could throw one down in warmups at the moment, and that missed layup to end the first half yesterday should have been an easy dunk. His finishing in traffic and touch around the bucket is maybe the best in the league, but just about every other aspect of his game has been off.

Valentine is the type of flashy NBA name-import selection the Kings were infamous for in the past. It was probably worth a roll of the dice however the time to pull the plug on him has long past. He has a collection of some of the worst turnovers I've seen in a professional game so far this season and continues to throw unnecessarily high-degree of difficulty passes in the halfcourt every time he handles the ball. Yeah he gets hot on occasion but like with Usher the good rarely outweighs the bad when measured across his minutes on the court.

But the real problems for us are on the other end of the court. Adams and Valentine are being targeted and are two of the worst offenders in terms of how easily guys are getting to the paint against us. We want to get out and run, but that's hard to do when you are pulling the ball out of the net most possessions. We should throw the zone into the trash (especially now that every team is prepared for it), but for me most of the issue here is personnel-related. The blame I definitely do put on the coaching staff is not rolling the dice on Glover and even Maluach/Makoi/Gattorna as they have all shown signs of being able to offer things defensively that others on the roster don't, yet outside of a stretch of games where Malauch found the court they've been glued to the bench. Toohey and Galloway have both been pleasant surprises defensively (both ends for Galloway, really), but neither are lockdown defenders either and still need a bit more seasoning - Toohey especially, and more consistency on his jumper.

For the Kings' front office there's lessons to be learnt from this season as far as where we source our coaches from - again, I don't lay as much blame on the coach as others (especially the Sydney fanbase who have been calling for his head for months), but the strategy of bringing in Americans vs locals more familiar with the league and players is a gamble and it doesn't always pay off. Also as far as team building goes, this year's recruiting relied a little bit too much on getting big-name imports without factoring in fit/style of play. Injuries have been the biggest factor with Hogg which is unfortunate, but even if he's healthy he's not nearly the rebounder or on-ball defender that Cooks is. I expect next year we'll chase Cooks again if we can compete with Japanese money (his production has been probably less than Chiba would have expected however).

You took your time Angus :) I did love to watch the Kings past two years because they played that entertaining/winning brand of basketball. They obviously had fun. Not so much these days.

Great write up Angus, Hunter has tried to stay strong through the carnage, Cooks Chiba form has been average, maybe disappointment from being cut from nba, but you certainly realise how much around the bucket he's missed. Let’s be honest, Martin and that other, I think Brazilian bloke you had last season were not inside bangers. Simons last season and Swani Lobo the season before were also defensive rocks, no one now. Imo a bit arrogance crept into the management, maybe they thought it was all too easy or decided to spend less. Two average performing imports and one injured certainly doesn’t help.