Turnovers to blame as Kings hit All-Star break on low note with loss to Phoenix Suns
The takeaway from the Kings’ 120-109 road loss to the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday was straightforward.
“The biggest thing that it should tell us is you can’t beat yourself,” head coach Mike Brown said after his team officially hit the All-Star break.
The Kings turned the ball over 17 times leading to 25 Phoenix points. The home team made 50 shots on the night while Sacramento hit just 37 with turnovers leading to extra possessions for the Suns.
Star guard Devin Booker scored 32 points while big man Deandre Ayton added 29 on 13-of-17 shooting. Point guard Chris Paul pulled the strings, particularly running pick-and-rolls with Ayton, dishing out a season-high 19 assists.
“You can’t have unforced turnovers against a good team like this on the road,” Brown said. “If there are 50-50 balls bouncing around on the ground, you got to want it more than them, and you gotta be the first one on the floor to get to it.”
De’Aaron Fox had his fourth consecutive 30-point performance and his sixth in seven games, recording a game-high 35, but he had five turnovers to his four assists. Fellow All-Star Domantas Sabonis had 24 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists, but he added four turnovers while Sacramento was minus-19 with him on the floor.
It was just the fifth time the Kings had 17 turnovers or more in 23 games since the calendar turned to 2023.
“I think we just had too many unforced errors,” Fox said. “Going up against a team like that, you can’t do that, just because they don’t make too many mistakes, and they capitalized off just about every error that we made today.”
Adding to the Kings’ issues was a lack of productivity from the bench against a Suns team that was shorthanded with three rotation players out due to injury and others sent out in the haul to land Kevin Durant ahead of the trade deadline earlier this month. Along with Durant, who was on the bench in street clothes at Footprint Center for the first time since the deal from Brooklyn, Phoenix was missing Cameron Payne and Landry Shamet.
Sacramento had just 15 points off the bench, with Terence Davis scoring 11 and Trey Lyles adding four. Chimezie Metu, Davion Mitchell and Kessler Edwards all played at least 10 minutes without scoring a point. The Suns, meanwhile, got a 19-point game from Josh Okogie, who made just his third start of the season and came in averaging 5.7 points.
The Kings also struggled shooting from inside the 3-point line for the most of the night. They made just eight of their 23 two-point shots in the first half, largely because Ayton was gumming up Sacramento’s offense with defense on Sabonis while Phoenix’s defenders did a good job in the passing lanes. The Suns had 12 steals, well above their 7.2 average for the season.
There was a notable wrinkle at the end of the third quarter. The Kings were struggling to defend Booker, so Brown opted to give newcomer Edwards his first minutes since coming over in the trade with Brooklyn on Feb. 8. He was given Keegan Murray’s minutes as the rookie was minus-16 in 21 minutes on the floor while making two of his seven shots. Oddly enough, Murray dished out a career-high six assists.
The Kings added Edwards, 22, a 6-foot-8 forward, because of his size and athleticism, hoping he can develop into a contributor starting with his defense while his 3-point shooting comes along.
“I wanted to give him a look,” Brown said. “He’s got size and he seems to have some toughness, some physicality to him on the defensive end of the floor. I just wanted to see — nobody can stop a guy like (Booker) — but you just want to make him work as hard as you can. ... I thought Kessler did a good job of it.”
Edwards had one sequence where he played good one-on-one defense against Booker, but Booker still made a tough fadeaway from the baseline that summed up Sacramento’s issues defending the three-time All-Star. Booker had 44 points in a victory over the Kings in Sacramento on Nov. 28.
“It felt good to finally get out there with these guys, put that Kings uniform on,” Edwards said. “I’m thankful for my teammates and coaches to make me feel part of this whole thing. I wish we would have that win, but it did feel good to be out there.”
The Kings will return to Phoenix to try to get their first victory over the Suns this year March 11 before the fourth and final match up in Sacramento on March 24.
The Kings hit the All-Star break with a 32-25 record, one game up on Phoenix with Durant’s return from an MCL injury looming in the coming weeks.
