The Sacramento Kings have plenty of youth and are climbing up the Western Conference standings. Here’s how they stack up with the Detroit Pistons.
The Sacramento Kings narrowly missed the playoffs while the Detroit Pistons nearly missed the playoffs, due to two losses to the Kings last season.
Diving into the losses, Detroit tried out load management by holding Blake Griffin out of the first contest and Andre Drummond out of the second one. Both contributed to the losses in a large way but the Pistons competed in the two games.
This season figures to be different with the Pistons adding depth and the Kings upgrading their rotations. But more on that later.
In Sacramento, the Kings won 112-102 while Griffin watched. Bruce Brown scored a career-high 15 points on 6-of-11 shooting. Stanley Johnson scored a team-high 16 points. Buddy Hield led the Kings with 18 points as one of seven scorers in double figures. Sacramento shot 51.2 percent from the field.
Hield scored 35 points in a 103-101 win in Detroit. Not to be outdone, Griffin scored a game-high 38 on 12-of-23 shooting. Luke Kennard scored 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting. But the Pistons were 17-for-47 (36.2 percent) outside of those two and nobody else was in double figures.
It was solid to see Kennard bounce back in a rotational role after he started the first game of the season series and went 1-for-8 from the floor and 1-for-6 from 3-point range.
A lot has changed on both sides of the bench. Adding Derrick Rose to the rotation is an upgrade over Ish Smith, who was inactive for both contests. Markieff Morris also brings added depth against an upstart frontcourt the Kings are developing.
Let’s take a look into what changes the Kings made to their young core of Hield, De’Aaron Fox and Marvin Bagley III.