How do you solve a problem like Tyreke?

When the Kings are moving the ball and making their shots, Tyreke Evans is nearly unstoppable. Yes, you’ve seen teams build walls behind their defender who drew the short straw for the night. And you’ve seen truly elite stars like LeBron and Kobe slow down the 20-year old rookie. But when the Kings are making the extra pass, getting to the paint and knocking down jumpers, how do you sanction enough help defenders to stop Tyreke Evans from doing whatever the hell he wants on the floor?

For Deron Williams, it’s become a persistent problem every time the Kings and Jazz play. Tyreke and Deron have technically split the season series thus far with Evans choosing the November 7th showdown in Utah as his coming out party and Deron’s team getting a home retribution victory without the All-Star point guard on January 29th. So for tonight’s game, it was a chance to see if Deron could finally check Tyreke and if Evans could win the season series against one of the more formidable teams in the Western Conference.

The answer for the Jazz was that they had no solution for slowing down Tyreke. Deron Williams is a very capable defender and a big enough guy to absorb Tyreke’s bulk a little bit. But for some reason, he is now 0-2 going against Evans and the future Rookie of the Year is averaging 28 points, seven assists and 5.5 rebounds against Williams with just two turnovers per game and 50% shooting (16/32). He’s also been to the free throw line 30 times in these two games. Now clearly, this isn’t all against Tyreke. He terrorized plenty of players in both games.

He took it to Deron off the dribble and in the post (seems like his baseline spin move out of the post against Deron is a certainty when they play). He took Wesley Matthews into the post and made him resort to flopping. He “dunked on” Kyle Korver (okay, he didn’t really dunk ON HIM but if you know ‘Reke’s lack of hops, this is as good as it gets).

And when the game was potentially on the line, Tyreke Evans ended up one-on-one with Deron Williams and took him to the hole for what looked like the clincher.

However, this game isn’t all about Tyreke. This was one of the few TEAM efforts of the past two months. Coach Westphal said afterwards, “we played a very solid NBA basketball game,” and he’s absolutely right. Maybe that seems like something that should be a guarantee in this league but for a team like the Kings who have been struggling, it’s never a certainty.

It all started with Spencer Hawes and Beno Udrih. Spencer Hawes had just gone through a couple of days of being pitted against Coach Westphal. When they came out for their introduction chest-bump, it was symbolic of the turmoil being put behind the team. And Hawes seemed to be completely energized by this new berth to the rest of the season. He was a force on offense, a force on defense and a force on the boards. Yes, THAT Spencer Hawes.

Westphal said, “I’m so happy for Spencer, I can’t even talk straight about it.” He added, “That’s exactly the kind of performance he’s capable of. It’s hard to bring that every night but he was one of the absolute key reasons we were able to get this win tonight. At both ends of the floor he was exceptional.”

Spencer was a complete player tonight. He was boxing out players like Kevin Love. He was knocking down jumpers like Brad Miller. He was attacking the rim like Gerald Wallace and he was challenging shots like Marcus Camby. Are those all exaggerations? Absolutely. But to see the effort out of Spencer was truly incredible for what the majority of Kings fans have witnessed this year.

He played really well in the two-man game with Tyreke but he played better with Beno Udrih. I’ve long contended through most of this season that we need to see more of the Beno-Spencer dynamic duo. They play well off of each other and make great decisions. They seem to know when to pass it off to the other, when to take the shot and when to swing it to the other side of the court. Westphal agrees.

“It’s always great to have a lot of passers on the floor. Both Beno and Spencer are excellent at reading situations, passing the ball and keeping the defense honest because of their ability to shoot the ball. I think it really helped our offense and our continuity. I thought our offense was the best it’s been all year with the ball movement, the decisions and the patience.”

Beno finished with the team-high of 25 points and found ways to kill the Jazz from all over the court. He combined with Tyreke for 49 points, 11 assists and only three turnovers.

Was this a perfect game for the Kings? No. They still gave up too many points inside, got killed on the boards and let the Jazz feast at the free throw line. But they did things well outside of that. They didn’t turn the ball over (eight team turnovers). They got to the line themselves (28 attempts but only 16 made). They didn’t give up threes to the Jazz and contested the majority of the outside shots (5/21 from deep for Utah).

The Kings benefitted from Deron Williams and his still healing wrist. Williams shot just 4/16 from the field but made up for it with 13 assists. Wherever you stand on the Chris Paul versus Deron Williams debate, you should still be able to realize that Williams runs a team as good as any point guard of the last decade. He finds his guys, never kills his dribble and gets the ball in the right shooting/scoring position for his teammates.

The Kings used Carl Landry’s toughness and Spencer Hawes’ activity to attempt to neutralize what the Jazz frontcourt did to them. Kirilenko had 16 points, Mehmet Okur had 11 rebounds and three blocked shots, and Carlos Boozer was a bull with 26 points and 10 rebounds. Boozer seemed to destroy Carl Landry for much of the night and there wasn’t anything the Kings could do about it.

But overall, it was a great and much-needed win for a team that was on the brink of anarchy and chaos. When you put this kind of team effort and execution around a budding star in Tyreke Evans, how do you stop this Kings team?

Jazz couldn’t tell you.

Benn Hodapp from PlayerPress.com did a little moon-lighting for Cowbell Kingdom tonight. Here is his recap and notes from the Kings four-point victory over the Utah Jazz. I’ll have my usual game recap later but here is a good summary of what went down.

Kings 103, Jazz 99

You won’t often hear me (or anyone else) say this, but here’s to Spencer Hawes! Along with many other people who follow the Kings, I find myself in awe of his stunning lack of consistency. But after chest-bumping and making up with coach Westphal during player introductions Friday, it appeared that maybe Hawes had figured something out.

It’s not that his numbers (15 points, 12 rebounds, 5 assists) were so outlandish, he puts up decent numbers at times. It was in the way he played and got the tough rebound or made the easy pass or hit the moving jumper. The beef with Westphal appears to be in the past and it was surely a positive sign that coach’s words were taken not as an insult, but rather as a challenge.

Beno Udrih (11-for-16) shot the ball out of his mind, bringing back memories of all those close games the Kings played early in the season. And it wasn’t just his patented 10-foot leaner that he was hitting. He drove aggressively to the rim and hit outside shots as well. Tyreke Evans (24 points, eight rebounds, seven assists) showed that he intends to keep the the Rookie of the Year trophy away from hard-charging Stephen Curry.

The Jazz owned the boards in the game, out-rebounding the Kings 48-37, but 13 of those 48 were offensive because the Jazz couldn’t find the ocean from the pier. The Kings were able to stay in the game and ultimately win because they shot a scalding-hot 55 percent from the field (42-77). Utah barely stayed over 40 percent for the game and went just 5-for-26 from three.

A challenge for the Kings that once again showed up and nearly cost them the game, however, was the Shaq syndrome that has engulfed them many times this year. The fourth quarter free throw shooting as of late is the stuff nightmares are made out of. They shot 16-for-28 for the game and even normally stone cold Udrih (84% ft shooter) made fans sweat in the final seconds. I’d like to make a soundboard of all the different groans that have escaped after Kings free throws this season.

Evans, whose free throw percentage was at one point flirting with 80 on the season a couple weeks ago has now dropped precipitously. He seems to be getting stronger in every other area of his game, but at the line he looks lost. He went 6-for-11 in the game and many of his misses were not close.

The Jazz were pretty much all Carlos Boozer all the time down the stretch. He ended up with 26 points, 10 rebounds and six assists. And it’s a good thing for the Kings that he wasn’t given free throws each time he complained or else he would have put up 50. Andrei Kirilenko and his shockingly mundane hairdo put up 16 points, good for second-most for the Jazz.

One recent trend that the Kings broke was the habit of having one ghastly quarter. There was no 29-12 run by the opposition in the second or third or fourth quarter this time around. The Kings outscored the Jazz in three of the four quarters, with the other being an acceptable 30-24 tally.

Injuries keep piling up in hilarious and thrilling fashion. To go along with apparent Bill Engvall-fan Jon Brockman and his knee, Jason Thompson is now out reportedly up to two weeks with a fractured back suffered Tuesday night against the Pistons. That fall was hideous. The slow motion replay was the visual manifestation of hearing nails on a chalkboard. It’s not that Thompson has been setting the world on fire this year, but he had been playing much better ball after a stint as a reserve.

Donte Greene dressed but didn’t play. I didn’t hear anything about an injury, but with how he has been shooting lately it may as well be a ‘DNP – Horrible, Horrible Shooting’.

The Kings took the season series 2-1 over the Jazz with the win. Utah had come into the game on a seven-game road winning streak. Jazz forward Paul Millsap, who had 32 points, 14 rebounds and seven assists in a 101-94 win over the Kings on Jan. 29, was held to just three points on 1-for-9 shooting Friday. He was able to grab 10 rebounds in the losing effort. The Kings will look to avenge a Feb. 20 loss to the Clippers when the teams face off Sunday at 6 p.m. at Arco.

During the intros for tonight’s first game for the Kings since the Hawes-Westphal “feud” officially went public, the Kings coach and Spencer decided to show that it was all water under the bridge after two days of practice.

After the game, Coach had this to say about the intros:

- “If you want to see that again, you’ll probably have to go back to YouTube. I doubt if I’ll pull that one out again for a long time.”

He spoke about it being a lot of fun and after a couple days of hearing about how they hated each other, it was a fun thing for them to be able to go out and do. Probably not the blood-thirsty quenching that some people wanted from this situation but it’s good to see the team has moved ahead and chosen to laugh at themselves a little bit.

Am I right?

As many of you know already, Spencer Hawes was benched for the home game against the Detroit Pistons Tuesday night.

While we all assume it was a message to Spencer Hawes about questioning his role in the Sacramento papers, there may be more to this story. Here is never before seen footage of a fake conversation between a virtual Spencer Hawes and a virtual Coach Westphal:

Okay, that was a little stupid but I really wanted to test out this new site, xtranormal.com. Thank you for indulging in my boredom.

Bad, bad defense.

That was the story of this game for the Kings. They played bad defense, the Pistons made their shots and Tyreke Evans was just amazing enough to keep it interesting in the fourth quarter.

The weird thing in looking at this box score is seeing the numbers by both teams. The Kings had 13 team turnovers and the Pistons had 12. The Kings blocked four shots and so did the Pistons. The Kings stole the ball seven times; the Pistons stole the ball six times. The Kings had 18 team assists and Detroit had 16. Both teams had eight offensive rebounds and 26 defensive rebounds. The Kings made four of their 13 three-pointers and the Pistons made four of their 11 attempts from beyond the arc.

So why was this a double-digit loss in which the Kings were never really THAT close after the first quarter? Simply put, the Detroit Pistons just made their shots.

Detroit was led in this game by their triumvirate of Rodney Stuckey, Tayshaun Prince and Richard Hamilton. And these three guys absolutely obliterated the Kings early and often enough to create a comfortable lead that ballooned to an embarrassing number throughout the third quarter. When they weren’t dominating, Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva came off the bench to provide a spark in the second quarter that helped push the game from “the Kings just being happy to have this be a close contest” to “the Kings needing to get their act together before they get blown out at home. “

Early on, Tayshaun Prince and Richard Hamilton made the lives of Donté Greene and Omri Casspi absolutely miserable. They combined to shoot 9/13 in the first quarter for 19 points, which a lot of was created by the constant penetration of Rodney Stuckey. The Pistons just had to spread the floor or set a little screen for Stuckey and it left Tyreke Evans on his heels and in the dust of the third-year point guard from Eastern Washington.

Aside from the slow defensive feet, Tyreke Evans tried to keep the ball moving and get everyone involved. He was a one-man show for almost the entire ball game until his teammates stepped up in the fourth quarter to provide help that was too late. Evans had a nice first half with 12 points and five assists. He did a good job of working with Carl Landry early and finding Andres Nocioni for a couple of key first quarter baskets to stop the scoring run of the Pistons.

But in the second and third quarter, the Kings managed just 32 points thanks to 11/35 shooting (31.4%). The Kings simply couldn’t get baskets to fall through. And it’s not like they weren’t being aggressive or weren’t being active. They attempted 10 free throws alone in the second quarter. But their bad shooting was amplified by the Pistons uncanny ability to make their shots. In fact, the Pistons made as many field goals (11) in the second quarter as the Kings did in the second and third quarters combined. This essentially turned Detroit’s 13 made baskets in the third quarter into gravy on the cake or icing with biscuit wheels or whatever the saying is to imply that a team built up an impenetrable force field of scoring margin.

When the fourth quarter came, Coach Westphal seemingly challenged questions about his playing rotations and played just five guys the entire quarter. When the first second of the final 12 minutes ticked off, the Kings had Tyreke Evans, Francisco Garcia, Omri Casspi, Carl Landry and Joey Dorsey on the court. And that’s it. This unit did very well on the floor and cut a 25-point lead down to just 12.

Tyreke played the entire second half of this game and racked up eight assists and 16 points. He finished with 28 points and 13 assists (career-high and two away from Kings rookie record of 15 set by Kenny Smith). In the final quarter, there was simply too much of a lead to overcome with a hot shooting team still scoring well enough to hold off their opponents.

Carl Landry had another solid game for the Kings with 18 points on just seven shots. He went to the free throw line eight times and made them all, giving him 19 attempts in three games with the Kings (and he’s making 84% of them). While Omri Casspi got torched on defense by Tayshaun Prince, he couldn’t make up for it on offense. He made just two of his nine shot attempts and couldn’t get anything to fall. He had good looks but didn’t have the touch.

Offensively, the Kings did what you want them to do. They attacked the rim. In fact, they attempted 26 shots around the rim and made 21 of them (according to HoopData). And defensively, they forced the Pistons to shoot and make jumpers even if they were created off of penetration. But the Kings shots outside of the ones at the hoop didn’t fall (11/46 for 23.9%) and the Pistons’ jumpers did find the scorebook (18/27 from 16-23 feet).

Did you notice the big, tall white guy dressed in a nice suit around the Kings bench on Tuesday night?

His name is Spencer Hawes and he is the starting center backup center no wait he’s the starting center again you know what let’s bring him off the bench guy in Paul Westphal’s dog house. After comments made in the Sacramento Bee on Tuesday, Spencer was benched and not allowed to dress out for the home game against the Pistons. The last time the Kings played the Pistons, Spence had 11 rebounds in 27 minutes. It was just the eighth time this season that he grabbed double-digit rebounds. So why wasn’t he given the chance to repeat that performance? Because of these comments:

Hawes acknowledged his frustration, saying “that’s about right” when asked if this trend made an already-tough situation tougher.

“All year we’ve kind of been dealing with that,” he said. “When you think you have kind of gotten over that hump, it comes back up again. That’s the philosophy, so you’ve just got to deal with it.

“Everyone up and down the roster has had a taste of that, so everyone can relate. I think it’s kind of tough, the not-knowing part on a game-to-game basis, to get in that rhythm. But that’s the way it’s going and there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.”

The nerve of this man!

Actually… that’s not really a big deal in my opinion. Now, as many of you know I’m not exactly Spencer Hawes’ biggest fan. I see the immense amount of talent and wonder why the consistent effort and determination don’t seem to match. But even with someone like myself who is so hard on Spencer, I really don’t see anything wrong with what he said. It certainly isn’t something that warrants a benching.

The rotations have been all over the place and inconsistent. You can see that here. So why banish Spencer for stating a complete fact? Especially when Sean May said this:

“It’s hard. Every (general manager) and every coach wants consistent results. That’s all anybody wants in this league, a consistent player, consistent results. But any time you have an inconsistent system, it’s hard to ask for consistent results, and I think that’s where a lot of guys’ frustration is right now.”

Sean May played 12 minutes tonight. He wasn’t benched. He wasn’t in a suit. He knocked down a pick-and-pop jumper from Tyreke. Heck, what about Tyreke? He said this:

“Guys never know when they’ll be having their time to play or they might be (starting),” Evans said.

“They’re going into the game confused, and when they get into the game they want to impress the coach and (try) to play well. ? It’s probably hard for a player to keep that focus when they know that if they’re playing bad they might not go in again.”

Those comments seem just as bad as Spencer’s and yet he played 44 minutes against the Pistons. So what gives? Why didn’t Tyreke Evans and Sean May suffer the same punishment for making similar comments to Spencer Hawes. Why the double standard?

Looking back at the team ever since Paul Westphal was named the new head coach, he and Spencer have seemingly butted heads in an indirect way.

There was the whole drama with Spencer not showing up to the Las Vegas Summer League. Spencer didn’t come to the summer league because he had “family commitments” that apparently couldn’t be rescheduled. It seemingly pissed Geoff Petrie off. And in a way, it showed Paul Westphal that Spenny wasn’t interested in learning the coaching staff and system early.

Then Spencer didn’t get to start the season and had to come off the bench behind Sean May. It’s one thing to be outplayed for your starting spot but Sean May wasn’t exactly re-slicing bread at the center position during the pre-season. He’s been in and out of the lineup ever since, which has to be frustrating for someone that is supposed to be a building block for this franchise.

After the loss to the Pistons Tuesday night, Westphal seemingly had some smarmy and possibly vindictive comments regarding the situation:

After the game, Westphal provided just short answers when asked about Hawes’ benching: “At least he knows his role.”

The Kings coach went on to add, “We have an open door, everyone knows their role. All you have to do is ask, anytime day or night.”

“At least he knows his role.” Seems kind of catty, doesn’t it? I almost expect that to come out of Jenny Garth’s mouth after she tried to prove a point to Shannon Doherty that she was the girl Dylan would like on an early season of 90210. It doesn’t sound like something that would be coming out of the mouth of a 59-year old coach who is trying to send a message to his young, brash center about falling in line with the system.

Ultimately, who knows if this is personal or if this is a legit learning lesson. Based on the comments made by other guys who didn’t feel this wrath, it’s hard to classify this as strictly a lesson.

But hey, at least he knows his role now.

Tamer Chamma and Tom Lorenzo discuss the Kings trade with Houston and where the team is headed with Sam Amick. The entire episode is good but at worst, you should listen to the first 20 minutes with Sam.

Click the link.

By doing the Daily Dime Live chats on ESPN.com, I run across fans of the most random players. There are fans that are infatuated with seeing Sean May succeed in the NBA. There are fans that want Jon Brockman to be a starter or wanted Sergio Rodriguez to be the future point guard of the franchise. And of course, there are tons of fans that want to see Omri Casspi’s minutes be a steadfast 36 per night with rotations down to the exact same second every game.

Fans and fantasy basketball owners are growing continually frustrated with Paul Westphal’s substitution methods and random acts of playing time. And in reading Sam Amick’s piece today, they’re not the only ones:

“It’s hard. Every (general manager) and every coach wants consistent results. That’s all anybody wants in this league, a consistent player, consistent results. But any time you have an inconsistent system, it’s hard to ask for consistent results, and I think that’s where a lot of guys’ frustration is right now.”

That was a quote from Sean May who went on to talk about how guys are up and down because of the inconsistent starts and playing time. There are a few different ways to approach this situation. 1) This is a young team so it’s fine playing around with their minutes to see which combinations work and which ones don’t for the future. 2) This is a bad team so the inconsistency in the playing rotations isn’t putting them in a position for consistent success. 3) Guys are going to be down if their minutes are inconsistent because ultimately their livelihoods are at stake if they have a down year.

I’m more inclined to look at the first option in this situation because I keep viewing this season as nothing more than figuring out which ingredients you need to for your championship soufflé. It might be difficult to come to grips with this idea (especially for season ticket holders) but this season doesn’t matter at all. It’s just a footnote in the playoff contending team’s media guide that is being written with each franchise-building move around Tyreke Evans. When Tyreke is terrorizing some fan base in the Western Conference Finals in five years, is anybody going to care that the Kings won a third of their games this year? No.

But still, you have to deal with the frustration of inconsistent playing time right now and that can cause awkward team issues. There is one guy this season that hasn’t had to deal with inconsistent playing time and that’s the 20-year old that nobody believes is a 20-year old. Tyreke Evans has had whatever playing time he needs out there when he’s been healthy. Why is that? Because he’s the franchise savior and you give the franchise savior whatever he wants.

I don’t think it’s a matter of Tyreke calling his own playing time by any means, either. But the more playing time and in-game situations he faces, the more likely he is to grow quicker and become a better player. So why isn’t this true with the rest of the team?

Look at the Top 10 used lineups of the season according to 82games.com:

Do you notice the one that was the most successful in terms of plus/minus and win percentage? It’s the one we all assumed the Kings would start the majority of their games with when we were figuring out this team in pre-season. The lineup of Tyreke at the point, Kevin Martin at the shooting guard, Andres Nocioni at the small forward and Jason Thompson next to Spencer Hawes in the middle seemed like the Kings best lineup and it was.

Now obviously injuries curtailed that lineup from being used on a consistent basis once Martin went down with his broken wrist. But even before that, Spencer Hawes had to EARN his way back into the starting lineup. By then, the wrist was broken for Martin and the Kings were thrust into the Tyreke Evans era.

(Also, for those of you claiming Tyreke isn’t a point guard, how can you tell when their two worst most used lineups involve Tyreke as the point man in one and the shooting guard in the other? There is no definitive evidence yet.)

I think Coach Westphal has done an admirable job with the team and finding which pieces work and which pieces don’t. Has he been perfect? Absolutely not. The inconsistent playing time for guys like Omri and Donté doesn’t make sense when they could be flanking Tyreke for the next 10 years. You need to figure out what you have with each young guy now – when the seasons don’t matter – so you know if they’re building pieces on the court or building pieces in a trade that nets you a more important player.

Rewarding players is key, especially with young guys, because they need to see that their hard work is paying off. I think Westphal has done that in the way he’s given starting positions out this season. However, when you have a guy like Donté or Omri start hot in the first quarter and then barely see the second quarter, you start to side with the frustration of fans and the players themselves.

Consistency will eventually come for this team but until then, everybody will need to learn to accept certain inconsistencies.

Here are the bad numbers from the weekend of a new era in Sacramento basketball:

- 177 points in two games.
- 29/46 (63%) from the free throw line in two games.
- 35 turnovers in two games.
- Outrebounded 94 to 68 in two games.
- Outrebounded 30 to 14 on the offensive boards in two games.

Maybe the bad offense wasn’t Kevin Martin’s fault, eh? Or are the Kings still reeling from the stank he mopped all over the Kings during his 22 games here this season? I think it’s safe to say that the Kings have had issues with or without Kevin Martin on the court this season and the aftermath after this trade has proven as such. The thing about the Kings offensive struggles hasn’t been anything to do with poor shots or not being able to make baskets. They’ve actually shot 46.3% (70/151) in the two games since shipping off Kevin Martin and bringing in Carl Landry, which is better than their season shooting percentage of 45.5%.

No the problem has been the same old issue with this team – they’re missing free throws and turning the ball over. They’ve also reverted to last season’s rebounding plan of getting killed on the board and giving up second and third shot chances against their opponents.

The Kings were able to stay in the game against the Clippers on Saturday night because the Clippers turned the ball over an obscene amount of times. The Kings took advantage of the Clippers’ 24 turnovers for 30 of their 89 points. But they also kept turning the ball over themselves. 10 first half turnovers kept the Kings from staving off the Clippers big second quarter. And then Los Angeles’ ability to clear the defensive boards limited the Kings to just five offensive rebounds in the entire game.

As for the game against the Suns, the Kings couldn’t keep the active Phoenix squad off the boards. The Suns grabbed 20 offensive rebounds Sunday night and it allowed them to take 15 more shots than the Kings. Couple that with the fact the Suns took care of the ball with only 11 team turnovers and Sacramento had very little chance at making it a game for 48 minutes.

With Carl Landry on board and starting (which he should be), it has thrown Jason Thompson into the starting center position. I, personally, believe this to be his future position in this league. But the Kings were killed by a big man in both games this weekend and you have to wonder how long before Jason Thompson figures out how to defend and neutralize these guys. Now, the two guys who killed the Kings inside also happen to have made the All-Star Game this year but Amare Stoudemire and Chris Kaman still obliterated the Kings interior.

Chris Kaman had 22 points, 16 rebounds and two blocked shots. He made 9/18 from the field and 4/6 from the free throw line. Amare attacked them with 19 points and 14 rebounds with six offensive boards. JT didn’t have bad nights in terms of effort and production. He had nine points and seven boards against the Clippers and 10 points with nine rebounds against the Suns. Are those good numbers? No, not really. But they’re also not bad numbers by any means either. The biggest problem is the fact that he needs to slow down the star big men inside. He doesn’t have to shut them down. He doesn’t even have to stop them from getting their numbers. He just needs to make them work harder in doing so. They continued to score and rebound quite easily.

As for Carl Landry, his being undersized is going to continue to be an issue against big front lines on the defensive end of the court. He’s just a little too small to truly slow down guys bigger than him. But you can see a decent fundamental approach to his post defense and that’s very active. He doesn’t roll over. If anything, he’s a little too aggressive in the way he tries to block shots. It gets him out of position and when that happens, the offensive players are able to get into better rebounding position to steal extra possessions.

Offensively, you have to love what you’ve seen from him. He is so quick inside that you really hope he can show Spencer and JT how to attack a post defender. He isn’t just a face-up guy, either. He has a nice mixture of going after a guy from 10 feet out and with his back to the basket. He also gets to the free throw line at a rate the Kings aren’t used to see. Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes combine to average 5.5 free throw attempts per game this season. Carl Landry has done that all by himself in two games. It was a bit alarming to see him miss three free throws in the first game. Considering he shoots over 80% on the season, you worried that the Kings uniform caused players to miss their charity chances. But he responded nicely against the Suns with a six for six effort.

As for another new addition to the Kings, I loved what Dominic McGuire brought to the team against the Suns on Sunday. It’s hard to say this for certain off of one game but he was fundamentally perfect in the way he defended guys one on one. He stayed into their chest, slid his feet to cut them off and challenged shots. Now, I’m not very confident with him having to dribble or shoot a basketball but he could be the shutdown wing defender the Kings hoped Ime Udoka and Desmond Mason could be.

Things pick up again Tuesday at home against the Pistons. But the Kings are going to have to crack 100 points, make their free throws and take care of the ball to get back to winning.

From Sam Amick’s Twitter:

New Kings starting lineup post Martin trade – Evans, Garcia, Casspi, Landry and Thompson.

I like it so far. Get Cisco back into the swing of things and let Hawes bring some energy and scoring off the bench, where he’s actually been pretty decent this season.

Francisco Garcia might be the most forgotten member of this team and the lost story of this Kevin Martin trade. He now plays a much more prominent role with the franchise and will get a chance to justify the presumed bad contract. Putting him out in the starting lineup let’s him get his legs going early. And if it’s not working, you’ve got Donté Greene off the bench to come in and provide a spark.