Mike Brown takes the blame for the Kings’ latest self-inflicted mistake – NBC Sports Bay Area and California

SACRAMENTO – After another game filled with self-inflicted mistakes, a lack of focus and determination, Kings coach Mike Brown saw no reason to yell at his players in the wake of Thursday’s 113-100 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers.

For weeks, Brown has preached pretty much the same things to his players over and over again, but the results never really change much.

Whether it’s a mistake blocking out, passing the paint, making better and cleaner passes or simply following the coaching staff’s game plans, the Kings have been pretty much stuck in the same rut, and there’s no indication that things will get any better . time soon.

“It is what it is,” Brown told reporters at the Golden 1 Center. “That’s why I didn’t yell at the guys. There’s nothing to yell about. They know exactly what we have to do. It’s if we go and do it. Tonight we didn’t go and do it.

“It starts with me. Somehow I had to figure out how to get them to do it.”

Of course, Brown had to take responsibility for his team’s failures. This is what most good coaches do.

But at the Kings, the problems run far deeper than the coaching staff.

From the beginning of training camp, Brown and his staff have tried to stress the details to the Kings’ players, though it didn’t seem to have made much of an impression.

While Sacramento made a slight improvement in defending the paint — the Lakers scored 44 points in the paint compared to the 76 the Denver Nuggets dropped on them a few days earlier — the Kings still don’t match the physical aspects their opponents have brought. .

This has led to breakdowns in boxing, while at the same time opening the door for opposing teams to be active on the boards. Three days after allowing a season-high 15 offensive rebounds against the Nuggets, the Kings matched that by giving up another 15 to the Lakers, leading to 18 second-chance points.

Then there were turnovers (17) and a lack of ball movement that clearly frustrated the head coach.

“The way we played both defensively and offensively was not good,” Brown said. “They touched our paint when they wanted, they drove us when they wanted. They manipulated us on the boards.”

Because of all the mistakes the Kings made, Brown was forced to run through his timeouts much faster than he had hoped. He had just one in the final 14 minutes of the game and used it with about four minutes left.

“To be really good in this league, you have to fight hard,” Brown said. “It’s not easy, and it’s not going to be easy anytime soon. Sooner or later we just have to decide, no matter how tired we are physically, no matter how tired we are mentally, no matter what the officials call or don’t call, no matter what goes right or what goes wrong… We have to decide , that we’re just going to leave it on the floor and try like hell to play the right way on both ends of the floor.

“Somehow we have to make up our minds and decide who we want to be. Tonight was not a good performance on any level in terms of trying to let the Lakers and everybody know that we want to come back to where we feel we should be in the position.”

Brown didn’t rule out making lineup changes, though point guard De’Aaron Fox sounded like it doesn’t matter who starts for the Kings. It is primarily about a desire to get better.

“We’ve got to go out there and execute the plan. If you just think about it (and) don’t do it, it doesn’t mean anything,” Fox said. “At some point, especially in this conference, you keep losing games like this, then we look back like last year and you’re on the outside looking in. We keep talking about how good a team we think , we can be, but until we’re able to get consistent wins or be consistent as a team that doesn’t matter.”

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