Kings mailbag: Where was Buddy Hield? Will Luke Walton or Vlade Divac get fired?
The Kings are on the verge of elimination in the Western Conference playoff race after losing their first three games in the NBA bubble. Fans are seething. Some have renewed calls for general manager Vlade Divac to step down.
The Kings are coming off an overtime loss to the Dallas Mavericks and yet another stark reminder they could have drafted Luka Doncic, who put up 34 points, 20 rebounds and 12 assists against them. Doncic has punished Sacramento all season, averaging 29.8 points, 13.5 rebounds and 11.3 assists in four games against the Kings.
Now the Kings are bracing themselves for their first encounter with rookie rhino Zion Williamson in a long-awaited game against the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday. Williamson, a 6-foot-6, 284-pound forward, is averaging 22.3 points and 6.4 rebounds after missing the start of the season with a knee injury.
In this week’s Kings mailbag, readers ask: Are Divac and coach Luke Walton on the hot seat yet? Are the Kings better off than they were two years ago with DeMarcus Cousins? What happened to Buddy Hield and Kent Bazemore in the fourth quarter against the Mavericks? And what will Walton do now that the Kings are 0-3 in the bubble?
Note: Some questions have been lightly edited for length or clarity.
Where was Buddy?
@DGKAcid asks: Was Buddy Hield on the floor during the fourth quarter against the Mavericks? Asking for a friend because this loss put the fan base in shambles.
Hield checked in with 5:50 to play in the third quarter. The Kings were leading 71-63. He made a couple of shots, missed a couple of shots and helped the Kings maintain a seven-point lead going into the fourth quarter.
Hield missed two shots early in the fourth and went to the bench with the Kings leading 88-85 with 8:21 remaining in regulation. He sat the rest of the fourth quarter before returning at the start of the overtime session.
Hield might have made a difference down the stretch in the fourth. The Kings missed their last 10 shots and couldn’t get a basket in the final five minutes.
Hield made a 3-pointer to put the Kings up 102-99 with 3:30 to go in overtime, but then he fouled a 3-point shooter, committed a costly turnover and missed a 3-pointer while the Mavericks staged a 10-0 run to take a 109-102 lead. Walton left Hield in the game. He missed another 3-pointer, hit a step-back jumper and then drilled a 3-pointer to get the Kings within four with 10 seconds remaining, but by then it was too late.
Where was Baze?
@goodguy_ben asks: Was Kent Bazemore hurt? Why wasn’t he in during the fourth quarter crunch time or overtime against the Mavericks? He was having a good defensive game and running the floor well.
That topic didn’t come up during Walton’s postgame interview Tuesday and the Kings took Wednesday off with no media availability, but there was no sign of injury.
Bazemore missed a 3-pointer and committed a turnover early in the fourth quarter, and then left the game with 9:25 remaining. He returned when Richaun Holmes fouled out with 1:52 to play and remained on the floor for the rest of regulation, but was not called on in overtime after being replaced by Hield at the start of the extra session.
What will Luke Walton do now?
@CJ4011 asks: Now that making the playoffs is unrealistic, how does Walton treat the remaining five games? Also, for a game that was small ball and demanded defense against the Mavericks, where were Corey Brewer and DaQuan Jeffries?
Walton keeps saying the Kings have to get back to the way they were playing before the shutdown, when they were one of the hottest teams in the league with a 13-7 record in their last 20 games. Earlier this week, Walton said the eight seeding games are an opportunity to “continue to build, continue to grow.”
Walton is treating this time as an extension of the ill-fated regular season.
Going winless in their first three games obviously hurts the team’s chances of reaching the playoffs, but it probably won’t change Walton’s approach. He’s in the first year of a four-year contract and remains steadfast in his belief the Kings must master half-court execution and defense before they will achieve any playoff success.
Walton will continue to use practice and especially game time to preach fundamentals, regardless of results. If the Kings can raise their level of focus, intensity and toughness, this experience could be beneficial for De’Aaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Hield, Holmes and others should they find themselves in the thick of a playoff race in the future.
Walton tightened up his rotation for a must-win game against the Mavericks, essentially relying on eight players with spot minutes for Harry Giles III and Alex Len. That’s why we didn’t see Brewer or Jeffries, but Walton expressed confidence in both players before the game even while saying he might go to a tighter rotation.
“That’s something I’ve looked at,” Walton said. “It’s something I think a lot of teams do when you get to the playoffs, which this is a similar situation here, but especially in that last game (against Orlando) we were just trying to get guys out there who were getting the job done.
“So that’s something that we’re looking at, but we also know we have guys like Corey Brewer, who are probably deeper on the bench, (and) DaQuan, who’s been good. If we’re not playing with the right physicality, if we’re not playing with the right intensity on the defensive end, those are guys we feel confident in going deeper into the bench with.”
Will Vlade Divac and Luke Walton get fired?
@bstone76 asks: How can Kings general manager Vlade Divac and coach Luke Walton get fired?
If the question is how can they get fired, they can just keep doing what they’re doing. The NBA is a tough business. Coaches and general managers get fired every year. Divac and Walton will get fired, too, if they can’t assemble a winning team in the next season or two, but they’re probably safe for now.
Divac and Walton are both in the first year of four-year contracts. Firing them now would mean paying them for three more years — and paying their replacements — something the organization would have been reluctant to do even before the coronavirus pandemic caused tens of millions of dollars in revenue losses.
The Kings have underachieved this season, but ownership will want to see what Walton, their 10th coach in the past 14 seasons, can do with a healthy roster before changing course yet again. Divac will get at least one more season as well, although his ultimate fate might have been sealed when he passed on Doncic in the 2018 NBA Draft.
But Vlade said he would step down ...
@bbrianwhite asks: Why isn’t Vlade gone yet? It’s been more than two years?
After trading Cousins to the New Orleans Pelicans in February 2017, Divac famously told The Sacramento Bee he would resign if the Kings were not in a better position in two years.
Some people want to hold him to it now, but that date came and went in February 2019 and the Kings were in a pretty good position at the time with a 30-27 record at the All-Star break. They faded down the stretch, but Divac was rewarded with a new four-year contract.
@sgb916 asks: Is this team better off than it was two years ago?
The Kings were 24-33 when they traded Cousins. They never won more than 33 games in six-plus seasons with him. That roster also featured Rudy Gay, Darren Collison, Garrett Temple, Arron Afflalo, Kosta Koufos, Willie Cauley-Stein, Matt Barnes, Ty Lawson and Anthony Tolliver, largely a collection of aging veterans.
Now you have a much younger core of Fox, Hield, Bogdanovic, Harrison Barnes, Marvin Bagley III and Holmes. We saw them win 39 games last season and this season many believed they would finish above .500 for the first time since 2005-06. The season hasn’t gone as expected for a variety of reasons, but the Kings were still in the playoff race for the second year in a row despite the relative inexperience of their roster.
No one will be happy about missing the playoffs for the 14th year in a row, but there’s no question this team is better off — and just plain better — than it was two years ago. The Kings have a higher winning percentage over the past two seasons and they’ve improved their league ranking in advanced stats such as offensive rating, defensive rating, net rating and PIE, even if those are mostly modest gains.
