Cowbell Kingdom Podcast Ep 33: On the road with Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee

by Jonathan Santiago & James Ham

Poor decision-making late cost the Sacramento Kings two winnable contests in their six-game road trip.  With a stop in Miami tomorrow, their cross country travels don’t get any easier.  We check in with Kings beat writer Jason Jones of the Sacramento Bee with an update from the road.

Highlights

• How has the team taken, especially Tyreke Evans, to Isaiah Thomas’ promotion to starting point guard?  “I can’t really tell how Tyreke is taking it just yet.  I just know that you can kind of tell it’s not exactly what he’s used to.  But I think offensively, they look a lot better.  There’s a lot more flow, the tempo was better, they run more.  Isaiah does a great job of getting the ball into the post…The move is looking good so far, I just kind of wonder just how is Tyreke going to be able function without having the ball in his hands as much.  Because somebody who knows him has told me, he’s had the ball in his hands his entire life.  Moving him off the ball is not going to be easy.”

• Why does this team have such a difficult time grasping the concept of feeding the post?  “I think part of it, I call it hero syndrome.  They all want to be the hero instead of just making what’s simple.  And it’s almost as if there’s a mindset of ‘Wow, DeMarcus has 12 points in the first quarter already.  Okay, it’s my turn to get my 12 points and and then we’ll get DeMarcus going again’ instead of just riding that out.”

• More Jones on the Kings’ grasp of basic basketball principles:  “A lot of it goes back to the whole idea of basketball IQ.  It’s simple stuff they don’t seem to understand.  That’s just basic basketball – if you have a good big, give it to your big.  You give it to him and you let him set the table.  I don’t know why they refuse to do that or they can’t seem to understand how to do that.  But, that’s been their issue and until they figure that out, they’re going to keep having games like they’re having on this road trip.  You know, you’ve gotta make the game easy.  They don’t make the game easy for themselves at all.”

Listen after the jump…

Music Credit: Ronald Jenkees – Guitar Sound

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