Why Kings coach Luke Walton played Bagley against Pistons. Will he play vs. Timberwolves?
Kings coach Luke Walton went big in an effort to resolve his team’s rebounding issues in Monday’s game against the Detroit Pistons.
Walton said he will probably do the same when the Kings wrap up a four-game road trip against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night at Target Center, and that could mean more minutes for Marvin Bagley III.
The Kings (6-8) will try to win again 48 hours after snapping a four-game losing streak with a 129-107 victory over the Pistons. The Timberwolves (4-9) have lost eight of their last nine games, but they put up a good fight in a 99-96 loss to the Phoenix Suns on Monday.
Walton started Chimezie Metu at power forward for the second time and brought Bagley off the bench for the first time since Oct. 22 in the win over Detroit. Metu recorded his first career double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds. Bagley had seven points, three rebounds and one blocked shot in 18 minutes.
Walton gave Bagley another opportunity after he refused to enter a game against the Phoenix Suns on Nov. 8. Bagley missed his first four shots, but the Kings increased their lead over the Pistons with him on the floor.
“He was good,” Walton said. “He was active, and he hasn’t played in a while, so there’s naturally going to be a little bit of rust there, but I thought his energy and his activity and his length was good for us tonight.”
The Pistons reportedly have trade interest in Bagley, the No. 2 pick in the 2018 NBA draft, but Walton said he played Bagley while sitting Maurice Harkless and Terence Davis in an attempt to improve the team’s rebounding. Walton feels the Kings have been allowing too many offensive rebounds, giving the opposition second-chance scoring opportunities.
Bagley struggled to stay healthy and develop certain aspects of his game over his first three seasons, but he was second on the team in defensive rebounds in 2018-19 (5.0) and 2019-20 (5.2). He was third in 2020-21 (4.9).
“We’ve got to rebound the basketball,” Walton said. “It’s like I’ve said from Day 1, we know we’re a smaller group. We’ve got a lot of guards we’re playing, and how much I can play certain groups together is going to be all dependent on how well we can rebound the basketball.”
The Kings are 19th in the NBA in rebounding, averaging 45.2 rebounds per game. They are 11th in defensive rebounds per game (35.7), but they rank 29th in defensive rebounding percentage (.696).
“Unfortunately, even though I thought we played some really good basketball through these first 12 or 13 games, throw out two awful games … we’re not finishing possessions. And, so, I’ve got to reevaluate, look to try something different, so we went bigger tonight, and I’ll rewatch the film. We did a good job on the rebounds total. I know they missed a lot of shots, but 16 offensive rebounds is not much better than we’ve been doing, so we’re still looking to figure that out as something that’s a priority for us right now.”
Walton may also be trying to get more out of his frontcourt given the way Harkless has struggled to get going. Harkless has started 11 of the 12 games he has played this season, but he’s averaging only 4.2 points and 2.9 rebounds while shooting 38.8% from the field and 25% from 3-point range. Harkless averaged 3.8 rebounds over his first eight games, but he grabbed a total of five boards over 64 minutes in his past four outings.
The Kings battled to a 47-47 draw on the boards against the Pistons. They gave up 16 offensive rebounds for the second game in a row, although that was partly due to the fact that Detroit shot 40.6% from the field and missed 34 3-pointers. Still, Walton was hoping for a better showing, but he indicated he would probably continue to experiment with bigger lineups for some period of time.
“We’ll give it a sample size going forward and see how that goes,” Walton said. “You can’t just take one game and that’s it or it’s not, so, just like we did to start the season, we’ll go forward and see if we can’t fix this problem with that as we continue to evaluate everything.”
