No one said it was going to be easy. Building a team, rebuilding a team, whatever you want to call the 2016-17 Sacramento Kings, it is going to come with major peaks in valleys. Sometimes those highs and lows will play out over weeks and sometimes they will play out in a single game.
After falling to the Portland Trail Blazers by a final of 122-120 in overtime Friday night, the Kings have now lost two straight and stand at 4-7 on the season. They have survived a brutal early season schedule and have a four day break to regroup and prepare for another wild stretch of games.
“I thought we played really hard, I’m really proud of our guys, playing 11 games in 17 nights, we were running on fumes,” Joerger said. “A couple of shots go down, maybe the outcome is different.”
Sacramento had plenty of opportunities to come away with a win both on Thursday against the Lakers and Friday in Portland. How different would the mood be in the capital city if the Kings were standing at 6-5 or even 5-6?
“What is proving to be with our group is that they’re becoming resilient, they’re being able to take a hit, take a punch, stay with guys, stay with guys, stay with teams,” Joerger said.
His team hung with the high-powered Blazers all night long. A bounce here or a roll there and they come out with a win.
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''Throughout this whole season we've shown flashes of who we can be, but we've got to get past that stage of showing flashes and be the team that we want to be,'' DeMarcus Cousins told reporters following the game.
The Kings are quickly learning how to compete on a nightly basis. They’ve had one blowout loss in their 11 games, a 117-91 drubbing at the hands of the Bucks, and they’ve been in the other 10. But they still haven’t found that missing ingredient that makes a team go from competitive to winner.
Through the early part of the schedule, Sacramento has failed to find that killer instinct that separates the good from the bad. After building a seven point lead at the 6:31 mark of the fourth quarter, they allowed Portland to drill them for a 13-0 run over the next three minutes to go down by six.
But there is a fight to this team. They continued to play through their struggles, tying the game with just under 10 seconds remaining and then denying the Trail Blazers on the final possession to force overtime.
“I thought we did a little better job of executing, we just needed just about one more play down the stretch to win that game,” Darren Collison told reporters following the gam. “Kind of let that one slip away from us. We can’t let that happen again.”
One more play encapsulates both the fourth quarter and extra session. The overtime session was a blur. It was like two heavyweight fight with 10 lead changes and five ties as the teams battled down the stretch.
Damian Lillard and C.J McCollum were incredible, but so was the combination of DeMarcus Cousins, Rudy Gay and Darren Collison.
Portland’s duo combined to score 67 points on 25-for-43 shooting, including 13 of the Blazers 16 points in the overtime session.
“We got a little bit stagnant, but Dame and C.J. hit some tough shots," Collison said. "When their hitting out there and you have your hands up, there’s only so much you can do.”
Cousins, Gay and Collison hit for 82 of Sacramento’s 120 points on the night and scored 12 of the Kings’ 14 points in OT.
But Sacramento’s trio came up short down the stretch. Gay missed a 15-footer turnaround jumper for the lead with 14.3 seconds remaining.
After Allen Crabbe hit 1-of-2 at the line, Cousins 26-foot 3-pointer came up short. The replay clearly showed Meyers Leonard fouling Cousins on the release, but no call was made and the ball went out of bounds to the Kings with 8.9 remaining.
''I don't understand it,'' Cousins said of the lack of foul calls following the game. ''I don't know what I have to do. I just don't understand it. I have to play through a lot. I'm not really rewarded for it, but I'm just trying to stay mentally strong through it.''
Gay struggled to get off a 16-foot jumper as time expired that never had a chance and the Kings walked away once again without the coveted victory.
“The spirit that we played with and how hard we played was just absolutely fantastic,” Joerger told the media following the loss.
It’s hard to argue with Joerger. They are competing. Now it’s time to figure out how to execute down the stretch and come away with the win.
It doesn’t get any easier for the Kings once they get through their four day layoff. They return to Sacramento for a five game trial by fire homestand. Waiting for them will be the San Antonio Spurs, followed by the Clippers, Raptors, Thunder and Rockets. The five teams have a combined 31-12 record on the season.
