Jason Jones had this for The Bee today about Spencer Hawes’ injury:

“He’s pretty sore,” Kings coach Paul Westphal said. “He’s almost certainly out (tonight at Minnesota).”

Hawes said he was kneed in the back of his knee. He missed Sunday’s loss in Cleveland because of a lower back strain.

Even though Spencer Hawes has been sort of obliterated by Al Jefferson this season, I think against a matchup like Ryan Hollins or Darko Milicic (who is apparently the new centerpiece for the Wolves franchise) could be very good for Spencer’s confidence.

Against guys like Love and Jefferson, he’s just not quick or strong enough defensively to guard these guys straight-up. He has to get a quick double team help and pray the Kings rotate properly. And especially against Jefferson, he seems to bite on the pump fake way too often/easily. However, against someone like Hollins or Darko, Hawes would be able to play off and be a dangerous weakside shot blocker. He also would be able to crash the boards while keeping his man off of them. Offensively, he can stretch them to the perimeter where they’re completely ineffective as defenders and use his quickness inside for a couple of good scores.

With him out, the Kings will feature a heaping dose of JT and Landry. This also means Brockman should get some good minutes. My condolences to the Wolves bigs for the bruises and sore muscles Brockman will cause.

Not even the return of Tyreke Evans could cure the Kings’ issues of playing complete games on the road.

Usually when the Kings lose – especially on the road – it’s because of one bad quarter that essentially does them in. That quarter Tuesday night was the third period in which the Kings were completely dominated. During the first half, it looked like the Kings were going to run away with the road win. Tyreke Evans wasn’t able to get his shot to fall early (mainly because Pacers kept blocking them) but he did everything else the Kings needed.

Tyreke seemed to hit the floor running early on in the game. He pushed the ball extremely well and created opportunities for his teammates to score. He created a three-pointer for Donté Greene (this first assist clinched Tyreke averaging five assists per game for the season, which is pretty impressive considering he could get zero over the last seven games and still finish with five per game), a dunk for Landry and another jumper for Landry. He created three more mid-range shots in the second quarter to give him six assists in the first half. He grabbed boards, stole the ball and played solid defense.

And most importantly, the team seemed to be clicking like he had never missed a game. Jason Thompson fueled a 14-5 run to open the second quarter and helped push the Kings lead to 15 points. Thompson had eight of those first 14 points in the second quarter and showed good energy against a frontline that should give him trouble. Even though Roy Hibbert is just an above average defender and Troy Murphy is a saloon door on defense, their height is something that tends to bother JT when he’s in the post.

After this run, the Kings seemed to relax a bit and you can’t do that against a fast-paced team that plays above average defense. They didn’t necessarily let the Pacers back in the game in the first half but they let them get into a rhythm on both sides of the ball to cut the lead to nine at half. In the third quarter, all hell broke loose and by “all hell” I mean Danny Granger.

I normally don’t say this about other team’s stars because I think it’s sort of stupid to fantasize about having another team’s star just put on a different team but with Danny Granger, I can’t help myself. How fun would it be to see Granger on the Kings with Tyreke and Landry? He’s a number one guy that seems to fit seamlessly into any offensive set or flow. It’s not like you just isolate this guy and hope he makes a bad shot. He actually plays good team basketball without hijacking possessions. In the third quarter, he showed a glimpse of just how good he is and in the fourth quarter he showed that it wasn’t a fluke.

The Pacers took control of the game for good with a 22-4 run to begin the second half (first 8:32 of the third period). Here’s what it consisted of:

- 2/14 shooting in this run for the Kings
- 9/16 shooting for the Pacers
- Five turnovers for the Kings
- Kings missed all five of their shots inside
- The Pacers had more made shots inside (5) than the Kings had total points (4).

All in all, Danny Granger nearly outdid the Kings in the entire third quarter by himself. The Kings had just 14 points to Granger’s 13.

The difference between the second half and the first half was a matter of defending and making shots. Sounds simple, right? Sometimes it is just that simple. The scored and shot the ball well in the fourth. They rebounded well throughout the game. They turned the ball over a lot (16 times) but not a crippling amount. They’ve certainly been sloppier with the ball before. They just weren’t as aggressive in going to the basket in the second half as they were in the first.

The Pacers defended the paint well – seven blocked shots in all. And I think it got in the heads of the Kings. Sacramento settled for a lot of jumpers on the perimeter. They took the ball inside a lot less as the game progressed. They had just five free throw attempts in the second half after having six alone in the second quarter. The Kings also didn’t really get any production from the role players.

Since Spencer Hawes was so ineffective and played a lot fewer minutes than JT in the game, let’s just sub him out of the starting lineup for this game and act like JT was the starter. Nobody outside of the “starting five” had more than five points, except for Andres Nocioni who needed 12 shot attempts to get to nine points. With Tyreke struggling to score the ball before the fourth quarter (he rallied late for 13 poins on 5/5 shooting in the last period) the Kings needed someone on the perimeter to step up. Beno did a good enough job of scoring but the offensive flow was ruined (just four assists after halftime for the team).

Chalk it up to just another frustrating performance on the road for the Kings this season in which they let an entire period ruin the rest of a good effort.

Final Game Notes

- Tyreke was clearly struggling with his mouth piece in his first game with it. He kept taking it out in hopes of better breathing while the ball was in play. Should this be a continuing problem? No. He’ll either get used to it or get rid of it but it will probably never be as uncomfortable and restricting as it was in this game. It was good to see him rally his effort and performance for a nice run in the fourth quarter. Unfortunately, the Kings couldn’t stop anybody on the Pacers during this stretch.

- I think it’s safe to say that Jason Thompson is getting back to his early season form. In his last four games, he’s averaging 13.5 points and 10.2 rebounds per game. His activity and effort are consistent. He’s still struggling to score the ball because he gets too low in the post. He completely takes away his natural ability of being tall because he crouches so low on his post moves. Hopefully this off-season he can learn how to play taller.

- Ime Udoka was in there during key stretches of the third and fourth quarter to try and slow down Danny Granger. It’s been established at this point that Ime is extremely detrimental to the Kings’ offense this season (TS% of 47%, offensive rating of 100, PER of 10). But you allow this discrepancy in offensive competency because of his defense. Well, if he’s getting abused by Granger over and over and over again, why do you keep Udoka in there? He played nine straight minutes from the last part of the third until halfway through the fourth and was horrible. If he’s not shutting a guy down, he has no business being in the game over Donté Greene. Give the young guy some reps. At least he has a CHANCE of scoring the ball.

- Even though the offense sputtered and the defense in the second half was basically non-existent, the Kings did win huge on the glass. While the Pacers aren’t necessarily a good rebounding team, they are long enough and active enough to where they could give the Kings problems. Instead, the Kings dominated with a 49-35 win on the boards. JT and Landry were just too much to keep them off the glass.

Check out the At Home With Jason Thompson piece from Kings.com:

Hope you’re checking out the work that Alex Kramers is doing with When Kingdom Come and everywhere that is smart enough to put him on the internet. He wrote this really good Omri Casspi piece that I forgot to link to this weekend.

He’s also taken advantage of the Kings’ east coast road trip by getting some access to the team. He did an interview with Jon Brockman recently:

“I’m probably going to sign some more, so you can walk back with me,” said the Kings rookie.

For anyone who’s met Jon Brockman, that likely doesn’t come as a surprise.  As we walked to the team locker room before Sacramento took the court against the New Jersey Nets — a game I had the pleasure of covering for Kings.com — the man who’s been affectionately called, “The Brockness Monster,” stopped for each person with an outstretched pen and paper.  Sporting a cumbersome brace on the sprained right knee that has kept him out of action since February 19, he graciously chatted with the crowd and obliged with every photo request.

Definitely click through and read the article. You can see that Jon Brockman just gets being a professional basketball player. He understands what it means to be one and why it’s important to appreciate the fans. Good stuff, Alex.

In yesterday’s game, Dominic McGuire apparently tore his right plantar fascia. I’m not medical expert but I did watch a lot of ER when Clooney was on the show. They never really tackled the whole plantar fascia world so that didn’t really help me determine it would be painful.

Regardless, Kings have announced he’s done for the year, which probably ends his run with the Kings. I love having a guy like McGuire on the roster. He was actually pretty good with the Wizards before this season when he started and basically was their defensive specialist. I’d love for him to rejoin the Kings this summer. Seems like a good guy and a hard worker.

There are two ways to take the way the Kings played this weekend:

1) The Kings played hard fought basketball and showed they aren’t a team to overlook.
2) Their opponents only played as hard as they deemed necessary to beat a less talented, undermanned Kings team.

Or maybe it can be both. Did the Celtics ease up on the Kings? Did the Cavaliers bust their tails to the fullest of their capabilities? I don’t think anybody who watched those two games can confidently say that the Cavs and Celtics tried their hardest for 48 minutes in each respective game. At the same time, the Kings made their opponents put games away later instead of earlier when everyone thought these contests would be decided.

That has to count for something, right?

Clearly, this team is different without Tyreke Evans. There are plenty of good players to try and fill the void left from one of the most historically impressive rookies that has graced this league in its 63 years of existence. The defensive effort from Donté Greene, Ime Udoka, and Dominic McGuire tries to protect the perimeter. Carl Landry becomes a capable go-to scorer and Beno Udrih becomes a master floor general. Jason Thompson and Spencer Hawes get more active inside and Omri Casspi and Andres Nocioni try to provide a little extra punch. But there is no focal point to hone in on for the opposing defense, which is a blessing and a curse.

In theory, if everybody is a threat on the floor at all times in a free-flowing offense based on trust and execution then you should be a highly dangerous team. However, that’s just a theory. Application of that proves to be so much more difficult. You need a dominant force at some point. You need a guy who gets a certain look in his eye and causes the defense to think, “Oh crap, I hope I don’t have to guard that guy.” Tyreke Evans is that guy. He’s going to be that guy for the next 15 years. And when you have that guy, you can go through stretches in which your teammates are picking their spots, conserving their energy and climbing aboard the Tyreke Evans locomotive. This idea of offense seems to work a lot more throughout NBA history. A singular man breaking the will of five can be a much harder thing to deal with psychologically.

If you can’t stop one guy then you certainly can’t stop four other guys around that main guy. The problem often for such a young team is figuring out the balance of when to go all five and when to ride the star.

In these two games, the Kings didn’t have that luxury. They had to endure as a five-headed entity at all times. And doing that against a five-headed entity with more talent, experience and success with you is hard to do. And when your five-headed entity is getting smacked all over the floor like what happened in the game against Boston, that’s a tough thing to come back from.

The Celtics hit the Kings with a dose that would make most teams want to let the clock run down as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next game. After the first half, the Celtics were cruising with a 57-37 lead. Paul Pierce was a handful, Rajon Rondo was dissecting the Kings defense and Ray Allen was coming off of screens and burying every jumper he took. Last year’s Kings team (which looks an awful lot like this year’s team when Reke isn’t around) would have probably rolled over and not put up much of a fight.

This year’s Kings team didn’t do that. The Kings didn’t let the lead get THAT much more outrageous throughout most of the third quarter and when the Celtics started clearing their bench at the end of the third, the Kings made a run to start making things respectable. The Kings defense was taking advantage of a lackadaisical Celtics offense and just outworked them. Beno lit up the Celtics for 11 of his 16 points in the third and the Kings cut the lead to 13 going into the fourth.

In the fourth quarter, the Kings got the lead down to six a couple of times but eventually gave way to the better team. They hung with one of the better teams in the league by continuing to work through the frustration. Carl Landry finished with 30 points and eight rebounds. He was extremely aggressive the entire game. He was 10/16 shooting from the field and five of those misses were blocked. He got to the free throw line 12 times and made 10. Even though KG and Rasheed Wallace did a good job of protecting the paint, Landry made his presence felt.

Against the Cavaliers, they didn’t face the same defensive resistance right away. The Cavs took advantage of sloppy play by the Kings early but never really seemed interested in keeping up any consistent defensive intensity. When the Kings weren’t giving the ball away, they were getting basically any shot they wanted. Beno orchestrated the Kings offense beautifully once again. He found JT and Landry inside and Nocioni on the perimeter.

Beno finished the game with a triple double and carved up the Cavaliers’ backcourt the entire game. We all probably could surmise that Mo Williams wouldn’t be able to guard anybody but Beno was able to get by and get his shot against Delonte West too. Delonte is one of the better defensive guards in the NBA and he seemingly had no chance to check Beno.

The Kings were extremely short-handed in this game without Tyreke, Spencer, Sean May, Jon Brockman and Francisco Garcia. Then four minutes into the game the team lost Dominic McGuire to a foot injury when the Cavs were building a double-digit lead. Sometimes when your team is short-handed, you have to resort to a different style or strategic adjustment and hope it works for the entire game. The Kings did that mostly by switching to a zone defense that kept the Cavs out of the paint.

Problem was LeBron James has a lot of talent. He simply made shots when he had to. He conjured up some fabricated swagger with a flu-ridden Omri Casspi guarding him in the fourth quarter, took questionable jumpers and flat-out made them. It was cool of LeBron to posture for the cameras, crowd and teammates after making them. After all, that’s what you do when you’re going to win 60 games in a season and have failed to put away a 23-win team who is missing their best player and two other cemented rotation guys.

Overall, the Kings did the best you could hope for this weekend. They competed. Did they compete against teams that tried their hardest? No, I don’t think they did. But at a certain point in the closing moments of each game, they made two of the best teams in the NBA step up their game. They forced their opponents to put them away or fear the embarrassment of losing at home to a poor road team. Landry proved to be aggressive and a force. Nocioni made his opponents respect his outside shot. Omri Casspi finally found his shooting touch. Jason Thompson regained a lot of the production we saw from him early in the season. And Beno Udrih carved up his opponents like Beatrix Kiddo.

Two losses were added to the column you don’t want to add numbers to but at the same time, they were losses that helped this team grow and add to the rebuilding process.

I’m weary whenever agents talk about their clients. Agents are essentially just telemarketers trying to push their product and get you to sign up for the “deal of a lifetime.”

But this piece in the Huffington Post Arn Tellem (Tyreke Evans’ agent) discusses the origins of his knowledge of Tyreke Evans and where Tyreke has come from. It’s important to see that the “entourage” around Tyreke Evans is literally all family with him. These guys don’t have ulterior motives to get a sports bar investment going or a production company loan co-signed by their “meal ticket.” The guys in Team Tyreke are his immediate family that look out for his interests first.

“My family, my team, has always been there for me,” Tyreke says. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be anywhere. I used to read things on the web that made it sound like my brothers from Chester were an entourage or something. But, hey, they’re my brothers. If anybody thinks they’re an entourage, then I have the best entourage in the world. My guys all have my back.”

That’s extremely rare in this day and age. It’s heart-warming to see. I’ve been fortunate enough to talk to Reggie and Doc Evans after a game recently about Tyreke and where he’s going. When you talk about Tyreke with these guys, you can see the genuine guidance they want to provide for their younger brother.

Click here to read the whole piece.

Stadium Journey is a new-ish site that’s actually pretty cool. People from all over the country (Canada too!) correspond and rate all of the different arenas and stadiums. I read through all of the NBA reviews this morning and from the arenas I’ve been to, I have to say I pretty much completely agree with everything that was written – except for the neighborhood of the United Center (took a wrong turn around the arena and literally saw three different drug deals within 30 seconds).

Rob Tocalino took a crack at reviewing Arco Arena and found it to be unfit. Read the full review here.

Of the NBA arenas that have been reviewed, it tied for last in its score with the IZOD Center in New Jersey.

Are you reading Pro Basketball Talk regularly? If no, facepalm yourself and then add it to your Google Reader. If yes, then facepalm the person next to you and give yourself a congratulatory pat on the back.

After Josh Smith got one of the best offensive rebounds we’ve ever seen (in terms of importance) last night, John “Big Time” Krolik decided to look at the Top 5 offensive rebounders in the game today. Jon Brockman made the list. In fact, he’s first on the list (even though it’s ALLEGEDLY in no particular order):

Brockman isn’t anywhere near the player that fellow Kings rookie Tyreke Evans is. In fact, Brockman probably isn’t one of the two best rookies on his own team. But Brockman is an unapologetically physical player, and an absolute monster on the offensive boards.

There’s more about Jon over there. Be sure to click through like a good reader should and check out the entire post.

So after we found out that Tyreke Evans has set his sights for Friday as his return, the Kings released a statement saying this:

Sacramento Kings guard Tyreke Evans will miss the team’s next two games (at Boston 3/26, at Cleveland 3/28) and will be re-evaluated on Monday, according to President of Basketball Operations Geoff Petrie.

Well that kind of sucks but it’s probably for the best.

Years ago, I was playing in summer rec league game and was knocked unconscious while trying to dribble out the clock as the other team was attempting to foul us to extend the game. Got hit with a dirty forearm shiver to the head apparently. I couldn’t tell you because I don’t remember. I just remember having the ball and then being on the ground looking up at everybody standing over me.

I wasn’t right for like two weeks. Considering Reke took a much harder hit to his noggin, this is probably smart for the Kings to keep him out against two physical, defensive teams in the Celtics and Cavs. There’s no rush to bring him back when the season is basically over. It’s disappointing because imagine what the Celtics and Cavs can do on their homecourts to the Tyreke-less Kings when the Nets just slapped them around.

Oh well, on the bright side the Pistons might pass the Kings in the overall standings, giving the Kings a better chance at a Top 3 selection.