by Charlie O Mallonee

SACRAMENTO–It was just too much to expect from the Sacramento Kings to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder on Friday night. The only thing that was surprising in that game was OKC let the Kings hang around a lot longer than I thought they would to be competitive. Ultimately in the end it was just too much OKC and not enough for the Kings and they lost that one 116-103.

Then the game on Sunday against Denver it mirrored exactly the same thing. The Kings hung around about three quarters and then fell back and they lost that game 122-111. It would have been great to have had the audio so I could have played it back for you. In both games head coach George Karl had almost the same post game analysis.

Karl said, “we played really well for 40 minutes it’s the last eight minutes that’s killing us.” A couple of reasons for that is number one the Kings are still getting used to the system and number two their short handed. When a team is playing shorthanded and literally missing it’s two big stars and Darren Collison was also out.

Collison being a good point guard but a very productive point guard with all three including Rudy Gay and DeMarcus Cousins it’s amazing they’ve scored the points that they have because the young guys stepped up and it’s helped them make some decisions about who they want to go after and keep on the team next season.

Regarding who’s running this team right now is it general manager Pete D’Alessandro or Vlade Divak? Nobody really knows right now and right now nobody’s talking. There has been a great deal of projections that because the Kings have had this very difficult second year under D’Allesandro that he could be on his way out.

He’s the one who made the decision about firing former head coach Mike Malone, he was going to make the decision about staying with an interim coach for awhile and his intent was not to hire a full time coach until the end of the season but with Tyrone Corbin it wasn’t working out so the hand was played and the Kings went with George Karl.

Charlie O covered Kings basketball during the 2014-15 season and did commentaries each week listen to his podcast below: