SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Kings coach Mike Brown didn’t mince words after his team suffered one of its worst losses of the season with the start of the playoffs less than two weeks away.
Brown questioned his team’s physical and mental toughness following a 142-134 overtime loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Sunday before a record-setting sellout crowd of 18,183, saying the Kings have been “soft” on their home court.
“We have not been good defensively at home,” Brown said. “The reality of it is we play sort of soft at home, and I hate to say it, but that’s what it is. It’s factual. We have trouble stopping people on our home floor and the tough part about it is our crowd is fantastic.
“Our crowd brings a ton of energy, but the energy just translates to our guys on the offensive end of the floor. We don’t have a lot of guys that want to or are able to consistently dig in and play at a high level with some sort of physicality on the defensive end of the floor — possession after possession after possession — and we’ve got four games to try to concentrate on that and get that right.”
This was supposed to be a crowning moment for the Kings, who were appearing at home in front of an appreciative fanbase for the first time since clinching a playoff berth on the road last week. Instead, the Kings came out flat against an inferior team that was missing its two leading scorers, Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell, due to injuries.
“Sooner or later, there’s going to have to be some fire from our guys,” Brown said. “I know from experience, it doesn’t matter what team I’m with, if it’s a great team, if we’re playing and performing at the level that we did out there, somebody’s getting on somebody. There’s some sparks and some fire in the huddle, and our guys are still not to that point. Everybody’s quiet and everybody’s saying, ‘Come on, we’ve got to do better,’ but we need some guys to step up and continue to try to light a fire under each other’s behinds throughout the course of the game.”
Doug McDermott came off the bench to score 30 points for the Spurs (20-58), who have the third-worst record in the NBA. Rookie Julian Champagnie scored a career-high 26 points off the bench for San Antonio. Tre Jones recorded a triple-double with 17 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists.
“They came in here and they played harder than us,” Brown said. “We just couldn’t guard their guys. We couldn’t guard Doug McDermott. He had great game. We couldn’t guard Julian Champagnie. He had a great game. Tre Jones had a triple-double. Zach Collins posted us up and scored on us whenever he wanted. For us to score 123 points in regulation and not figure out how to win, it’s tough to swallow.”
De’Aaron Fox scored 24 points for the Kings (47-31), but he went 10 of 23 from the field and 0 of 8 from 3-point range. Domantas Sabonis had 26 points, eight rebounds and six assists.
Keegan Murray added 18 points while Harrison Barnes and Terence Davis scored 15 points apiece, but the Kings couldn’t overcome their porous defense after allowing San Antonio to shoot 53.1% from the field and 38.2% from beyond the arc. The Spurs scored 140 points for the first time this season.
“We have to be able to get stops,” Fox said. “That’s where our season is going to hang.”
Asked if this was an alarm-bell moment for his team, Fox said: “I think the alarm’s been going off for a long time, so at some point we’ve got to stop it.”
The Kings are 25th in the NBA in defensive rating (116.0) this season. Curiously, they are 29th at home (118.2) and ninth on the road (113.8).
“Obviously, on the road, you have to bring your own juice,” Fox said. “No matter how many Kings fans we have in most arenas, when you’re on the road, you kind of feel like it’s just our guys. I feel like our defense has traveled better on the road than it has at home. At some point we have to figure out how to fix that.”
The Spurs jumped out to a nine-point lead in the opening period. The Kings came back to take the lead early in the second quarter, but they trailed 63-58 after shooting 43.8% from the field and 22.7% from 3-point range while committing 11 turnovers in the first half.
The star of the show for San Antonio was Champagnie, an undrafted rookie from St. John’s who was appearing in his 13th NBA game. Champagnie scored 22 points on 8-of-10 shooting with three 3-pointers in the opening half, far surpassing his previous career high of 12 points.
“Those are still pros at the end of the day,” Fox said. “They might not have been in the NBA two weeks ago, but they were playing high-level basketball somewhere, so you’re always going to go out there and play against professional basketball players, and you have to be able to go out there and, no matter who it is, if it’s one of the best players in the world or if it’s someone who’s getting their shot, they’re coming out to play hard. They’re coming out there to prove that they deserve to stay in this league, so you always have to step out there and be ready.”
The Kings tied the game early in the third quarter, but they soon found themselves trailing by 11 following a four-point play by Champagnie and a three-point play by Tre Jones.
The Spurs led 96-92 going into the fourth quarter. Fox scored 12 of his 16 fourth-quarter points over a span of 4:16 to help the Kings take a 111-107 lead with 6:07 to play, but the Spurs responded with an 8-0 run to reclaim the lead.
Fox tied the game with 36.2 seconds remaining in regulation. The Kings came up with a rare defensive stop at the other end, but Kevin Huerter missed a 3-pointer as time expired.
The Spurs outscored the Kings 19-11 in overtime, creating some separation when Murray fouled McDermott on a 3-point attempt, sending him to the line for three free throws.
Brown talked about the physical and mental toughness it will take for the Kings to win games in the playoffs.
“The mental toughness is probably more important than the physical toughness because to do it possession after possession — to really want to get up in somebody’s chest and make it hard without getting blown by, to come across and take a charge without moving out of the way every possession, to sink to a body and hit a body on the backside to keep them off the glass — to do that possession after possession while flying around with a sense of urgency, it does take a physical toughness to do, but just as importantly, in order to work that hard, there’s a mental toughness that you have to have in order to do it for as close to 48 minutes as possible. And our guys, I give them credit, they are competing.
“They are trying to work hard, but there is another level that we can take it to and the only way we’re going to be able to get to that level is probably to go through some things and experience some heartache to see what it really takes to compete at the highest level every single possession. You hope it doesn’t come down to that, but at the end of the day sometimes you’ve got to go through some experiences and get hit in the head and realize that, ‘Ok, yeah, I thought I was playing hard, but dang those guys really are playing hard and they really are physical and they really are going up for every possession. We’ll see. We’re going to keep pushing and challenging our guys, and hopefully the guys will keep fighting and keep trying to do it no matter who’s in front of us.”
