Kings allow 140 points to NBA’s worst offense, losing ninth in a row to New York Knicks
De’Aaron Fox had another big game in the Big Apple, but it wasn’t nearly enough on a night when the struggling Kings gave up 140 points against the worst offensive team in the NBA.
Rookie Immanuel Quickley came off the bench to score 25 points to lead the New York Knicks to a 140-121 victory over the Kings on Thursday night at Madison Square Garden. Alec Burks torched the Kings off the Knicks’ bench as well, scoring 24 points on 8-of-12 shooting.
Julius Randle had 21 points and 14 rebounds for the Knicks (16-17), who handed the Kings their ninth consecutive loss. Derrick Rose added 18 points and six assists.
Fox finished with 29 points and 11 assists for the Kings (12-20), who have not won since defeating the Los Angeles Clippers on Feb. 7. Harrison Barnes posted 22 points, seven rebounds and five assists with two steals.
Kings coach Luke Walton, Fox and Barnes all talked about how poor basketball IQ and defensive awareness continue to plague this team as the losses continue to mount.
“I think sometimes it’s not that we’re not playing hard, but it’s that we make it hard on ourselves by some of the mistakes we’re making,” Walton said. “And your natural reaction when times are tough is to go faster and push harder, but there’s a balance between doing that and staying levelheaded enough to executive what’s trying to be accomplished, mainly on the defensive end. That’s one of the challenges we face is finding that balance and right now, obviously, we’re not doing a great job of that.”
Marvin Bagley III had 19 points and five rebounds for the Kings. Rookie Tyrese Haliburton continued to impress, finishing with 17 points, four rebounds, four assists and four steals.
Fox has shined on this stage a time or two before. He put up 30 points and eight assists in a 102-94 victory over the Knicks at Madison Square Garden on March 4, 2019. He had 24 points and six assists in a 113-92 win over the Knicks when the Kings went back to New York on Nov. 3, 2019.
Fox was even better this time, but the Kings couldn’t stop the Knicks. New York led 77-62 at the half after shooting a sizzling 65.9% from the field, including 9 of 17 (.529) from 3-point range. Fox and Bagley combined for 34 points in the opening half, but it wasn’t enough with the Kings offering little resistance at the defensive end. Rose had 13 points on 6-of-6 shooting. Randle made 6 of 9. Quickley and Taj Gibson combined to make 7 of 9 off the bench.
Whatever hope the Kings had of staging a comeback quickly faded in the second half. Bagley had to go to the bench after picking up his fourth foul at the start of the third quarter. The Kings cut the deficit to single digits on a couple of occasions early in the fourth quarter, but they would later find themselves trailing by as many as 23.
“We had a game plan coming into the game and we didn’t execute it, so we started changing coverages on the fly, trying to do other things to get stops,” Barnes said. “We have one coverage, we aren’t getting stops. We have another coverage, we’re not getting stops. So t some point it simply just comes down to stopping the guy who’s in front of you, regardless of who it is. Closing out and getting a rebound. Closing out and getting a loose ball. Those are basic defensive principles that we’re not doing right now and that’s why we’re on this losing streak.”
Health and safety protocols
Kings coach Luke Walton said forward Jabari Parker and center Hassan Whiteside were ruled out due to health and safety protocols after someone within the team tested positive for COVID-19.
Walton said players and staff were isolated in their hotel rooms over the past two days while the NBA used tracking devices to determine which players would be required to enter the protocol process. Walton said he feared it would be worse.
“We weren’t quite sure until late, late last night who else was going to be involved in that as they did some of the tracing back to it, so we were kind of just anticipating the worst, hoping for the best,” Walton said. “… We’re happy that we do have the players left we do because there was a second there we thought we were going to lose much more as far as more bodies than just the two.”
Up next
The Kings will conclude this five-game road trip when they visit the Detroit Pistons on Friday night.
The Pistons (9-23) have lost four of their last five games. They just concluded a five-game road trip of their own with a 128-118 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans.
Jerami Grant was not selected for the All-Star Game, but he is having a breakout season for the Pistons. Grant, a 6-foot-8 small forward, is averaging a career-high 23.3 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.1 assists. He scored 43 points in a loss to the Chicago Bulls on Feb. 17.
The Philadelphia 76ers selected Grant out of Syracuse with the 39th pick in the 2014 NBA Draft. He spent his first six seasons with the 76ers, Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets, never averaging more than 13.6 points per game.
Kings upcoming schedule
Feb. 26 at Detroit Pistons, 5 p.m.
Feb. 28 vs. Charlotte Hornets, 7 p.m.
March 3 vs. Los Angeles Lakers, 7 p.m.
March 4 at Portland Trail Blazers, 7 p.m.
March 11 vs. Houston Rockets, 7 p.m.
This story was originally published February 25, 2021 at 7:57 PM.
