Kings blow another big lead after deviating from game plan vs. Bulls originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area
SACRAMENTO – Three days after pulling off a stunning win over the Minnesota Timberwolves without De’Aaron Fox, the Kings got their point guard back and appeared headed for a comfortable win Monday before laying an egg over the final two minutes.
Against a Chicago Bulls team that has been mediocre at best for most of the 2023-24 NBA season, the Kings wilted down the stretch at Golden 1 Center in a 113-109 defeat.
Sacramento blew a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter, committed a trio of costly turnovers in the final minutes and were outscored 13-1 over the final four minutes.
“In our business, teams can go on a run or the script can flip like that, and before you know it, you’re in trouble,” Kings coach Mike Brown said after the loss. “I’m not sure if our guys took their foot off the gas, per se. I feel like we didn’t do what we we should have done, and that was from the beginning of the game.
“Even though we had gotten a couple of leads, we were still not doing a good job of moving the basketball and they were turning us over. That eventually caught up with us.”
The loss prevented the Kings (34-26) from holding ground in the Western Conference. A win would have pushed Sacramento within percentage points of the No. 5-seeded New Orleans Pelicans. Instead, they fell a half game behind the Phoenix Suns for No. 6, with No. 8 Dallas one-half game back.
This epic collapse definitely stung.
Sacramento was outscored 36-18 in the fourth quarter when DeMar DeRozan poured in 19 of his 33 points to fuel the Bulls’ comeback.
But as both Brown and Fox noted, the Kings took themselves out of the game when they ignored the plan going in.
Chicago owns the NBA’s top interior defense, allowing an average of just 44.4 points in the paint. Brown and his staff tried to prepare the Kings for that type of defense, with the idea of kicking the ball out to the perimeter rather than driving inside.
The Bulls have been middle-of-the-pack in terms of defending 3-pointers, with opponents knocking down nearly 37 percent…
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