Wolves 116, Kings 106: Minnesota Musical Chairs

LEGAL NOTICE: This recap is presented to you in part by our friends, The Kings Herald (For those who don’t know, they were squeezed out of your previous SBNation home) Will Griffith provides excellent content for the Sacramento Kings, hosts a podcast with the Kings’ former head coach / GM / Broadcaster, Jerry Reynolds, and is my best friend who constantly motivates me in life. I guarantee that he will be one of the best followers for you on social networks! @WillofThaPeople

Will will assist me, helping with the recap of this trio of April Kings-Timberwolves games. It will provide a view of Sacramento’s perspective with game 1 being our collective pessimistic angles in our franchises, game 2 as optimistic inclinations and game 3 as our most realistic expectations in the future. Enjoy!

Timberwolves Pessimistic Outlook @ TheKingsHerald

Will Griffith’s Kings Pessimistic Outlook:

Each motivational YouTube video made to encourage 21-year-olds who go to the gym 3 days a week for the first time in their lives has a saying that came up at some point, whether in an illegally cut narration or at the end of a badly photoshopped poster:

“The good is the enemy of the great”.

For a team that has lost the playoffs in the last 14 seasons, it is much, much closer to “mediocre is the enemy of decent”. The Kangz are stuck in the worst position in the league – they’re not talented enough to make a noise at the Western Conference, but they’re not so prone to injury or lacking talent to really find themselves in a position for an elite Draft 21 perspective that are absolute rubbish. De’Aaron Fox is showing increasingly long flashes of 1A scoring skills. Tyrese Haliburton is ready much earlier than expected and much better than many predicted when he dropped to 12th in last year’s draft. These two, by themselves, are the central elements for any future success that the Kings have. They will also not be enough if the Kings want sustained success at the Western Conference.

Many expected, and some even hoped, that the Kings would finally join a youth movement on time and negotiate one or both Buddy Hield or Harrison Barnes. But first-year GM Mount McNair I didn’t find anything worthwhile or the mini-tank and now the Kings are here: begging the basketball gods and their new bench pieces to take them to the tenth seed as their fans fight a civil war over the merits of a tank with a player of Fox’s caliber (and contract) pressing for a playoff race. Neither side is right or wrong, but the hell they are going to try to argue until the other side is destroyed. All the time, Richaun Holmes it’s no longer the best kept secret in the NBA and runs the risk of moving away from the Kings at the end of the season – the Kings have limits on what they can afford right now and Holmes an unrestricted free agent. It’s the same old season, different Kangz and damn it, we’re all tired of it. Some are still waiting for a playoff at the end of the straight, some were hoping that before the negotiation deadline it wouldn’t be too late to fall into the Top 5. We’re all waiting for a direction that includes a long sequence of playoffs – something that is not entirely achievable with the current group. I bet a lot of money that the Kings are going to break Minnesota’s playoff streak and have very little to show for it.

Game review by Will Griffith:

This game is a stereotype Kangz performance. On paper, they should have crossed over in this game. They are much healthier, have much more practice with each other, and are simply more talented. Even so, they allowed this team of wolf-of-the-bush to stay close and even take the lead a quarter of the second half. O Timberwolves he just chased these Kings at times and it’s not surprising that Sacramento let that happen. With an average of 114.6 points per game, they did not exceed the 40-point mark until 4:30 at the end of the break. For the worst defensive ranking in NBA history versus the fourth worst NBA ranking this season, the question of “good defense or bad attackIt was a very easy answer. Normally Kings go as Fox it goes – he had almost 40% of his attack in the first half with 20 points and the Kings just drawing 55-55.

The only thing that needs to be said about the third is that, despite all the ugly noise and heavy breathing in the third, the team again ended up tied at 82.

I’m curious to see what unbiased fans think of the Kings team that watched tonight. Would you believe it when I say that the Kings have won 7 of 8 games on two different occasions this season? They followed the first race with 9 consecutive losses and had lost three in a row before tonight’s defeat at the hands of their team. A better writer than I could probably frame this story as two emerging teams fighting in the basement before becoming future candidates, but I think we all know that this is not happening to any of us and if I had to guess, Minnesota is really closer to that goal than the Kings at this point. Are they some games out of play-in ?! How wolves can be … Listen. The best way that I can put this is the Kings are waiting for their Jimmy Butler to show up and prove that they’re finally ready for the playoff restraint. It is bound to go too and impact the future of the Sacramento Kings franchise in similar or worse ways than in Minnesota. In the words of our mutual friend:

Nemanja Bjelica: Fuck, they will deserve it.

Game highlights

Game notes

• The main chatter of the game tonight will be the constant musical chairs that the Timberwolves continue to play. First was KAT x2 (Pulse, COVID). So it was D’Lo (Knee) So Ricky (Back) So Malik x2 (Suspension, hamstrings) These four players hardly shared the court together, and at this point, you should ask yourself if they ever willingness for a long period of advancing games. All that was said, tonight was D’Angelo Russellnight and I can’t say how good he was in his first game back. He was absolutely tight tonight, going in a personal 8-0 race to really put the Wolves in the driver’s seat to end the game. I loved how Finch was running the (Wait for it…) 2-point guard training. He was trying to make wrinkles out of the ball to make D’Lo more like a catch-and-shoot SG, which was absolutely beautiful. It seems that D’Angelo is blocked and loaded for the final stretch of the games.

• Karl-Anthony Towns once again took a pleasant evening stroll and came back with a 23/13/5 line. The Kings were able to come back in 4, with just 2 minutes left, until KAT scored 5 consecutive points to really end the game. This is what we have and will continue to expect from our leader.

• We took a look at what the games of the remaining season will look like with Anthony Edwards as the 3rd scoring option. He had his moments tonight when he hit a few 3s early and a big basket on the 4th, but he got 19 points out of 15 shots (0.333 FG%) complemented by 8 bags, 5 coins and steals. Not bad, Ant.

• Dave Benz said “Ants can swim !!!“Tonight. I’m going to do the Timberwolves community a favor and compile all the Ant Benzsies facts at the end of the season.

• Jordan McLaughlin it looked like the best he had in a while tonight, outperforming Hassan Whiteside in a series of artful finishes in the painting that kept the Wolves afloat during a second half straight. And so, out of nowhere, we have 3 healthy and capable healthy shipowners!

• Juancho Hernangomez, despite all its flaws, had a net positive effect on tonight’s game with a series of heady plays. Finch’s unwavering confidence in Juancho remains one of the most surprising stories of recent times. He finished with 17 points, 9 (!) Rebounds, 1 assist and 1 steal.

• The Big Mac fought again tonight, looking a little defeated on one of the few occasions this season. Harrison Barnes forced him to 5 fouls and just 20 minutes of action. Better days are ahead for Jaden McDaniels.
• There was a time today when Coach Finch inserted Jarrett Culver to try to help slow a Kings race, but he would immediately be turned into roast chicken in a Barnes spin, giving up on an e-1. He would go happily unfortunately, I get on the bench just seconds later.

• Great message for Naz Reid that was a team of +21, posting 10 points, 7 boards and 2 actions. Nazreon made 2 of 3 three hands tonight, which is an important development. Finch tried the KAT-Naz combo and praised it to a large extent.

• Buddy Hield launched 16 three hands tonight and made 6 of them. He lost the only non-3PA he did tonight.
• Harrison Barnes “Only” made 21 points in 37 minutes, but he threw 0.643 from the field tonight. It was a crime for Luke Walton to limit his attempts as much as he did.
• De’Aaron Fox quickly became the Karl-Anthony Towns of the Sacramento Kings, although the former played more in defense (I think). KAT is generally more dominant in attack, but today Fox seemed absolutely unstoppable. He had the highest score in the game, 31 points from just 16 shots. This is ridiculous. I am not looking forward to the “Take the fox out of the bag”Headlines soon.