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PHILADELPHIA
VS.
TORONTO
MILWAUKEE
VS.
CHARLOTTE
SAN ANTONIO
VS.
DALLAS
L.A. LAKERS
VS.
SACRAMENTO
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When it comes to Shaq, Kings are clueless
By Scott Howard-Cooper
Special to ESPN.com
The Sacramento Kings are looking leaderless, directionless and, at times,
clueless, and the only people surprised by this are the ones who haven't
been paying attention.
|  | | You can try to double team him, but Shaq just scores anyway. |
They're down 2-0 in the Western Conference semifinals to the hottest team
in the league, which is bad. Just not as bad, come to think of it, as the
notion that the Lakers have the stable locker room as the series shifts to
Arco Arena, with the Kings trying to figure out what to do with Shaquille
O'Neal and Phil Jackson trying to figure out there was emotional sabotage to
be done and he missed out on it.
Not that Jackson didn't try. The Game 4 clincher of the Kings'
first-round victory over the Suns, a momentous occasion for an organization
and a city, was barely into its 37th screening on VCRs around Sacramento and
various other nearby semi-civilized locales before the rednecks took another
hit, this time for celebrating in Phoenix like they had won a championship.
Goofy, he called the upcoming opponent, and suggested maybe it would be a
good idea for them to steer clear of the drug-sniffing dogs at the airport.
Rick Adelman came back with "He should know." Proving that, despite what
it looked like in the early going of the series, the Kings were capable of
some response.
"Sacramento needs someone to go at," said Jackson, all too willing to
help. "We'll give 'em some bait."
And so the saga played out again, Jackson tweaking a city and a team and
the citizenry getting twisted around about it, like a batter badly waving at
an offspeed pitch it can't lay off. He is the cat and they are the string and
he got to play some more, just like Orlando got dinged for being a plastic
city and the Spurs were given an asterisk for winning their championship in
the lockout season. A little jocularity -- his word -- is good for everyone, he
said.
| |  | |
| Pollard |
| |  | |
| Divac |
The Kings, having apparently agreed, went for the big laugh. They give
mostly single coverage to O'Neal, as dominant an inside presence as any time
during his MVP run of a year ago, and on the rare occasions when the
defensive help did come, it was passive and ridiculously ineffective. But it
gets better. Adelman says at practice the next day, after Vlade Divac and
Scot Pollard had gotten out of surgery from having their heads reattached,
that the Cavalry was supposed to arrive with the double teams, but that the
players didn't follow the game plan.
Oh.
The Kings not executing plays is nothing new, but it went on for the whole
game without any adjustments or corrections? O'Neal had 44 points, and that
was with a few close misses, prompting the sight of the Kings running for
cover as Lakers guard Derek Fisher noted, accurately, "Actually, Shaq wasn't
necessarily on his best game." Someone's got to get this on the Comedy
Channel and fast.
The Kings are, however, necessarily in big trouble. They have no answer
for O'Neal, even more than a lot of teams don't have an answer for O'Neal.
The Trail Blazers threw half the Redwoods in California and Oregon at the guy
and he still went for 27 points and 15.7 rebounds. Sacramento has Divac,
drifting in and out like always, and Pollard, one of the best frontcourt
reserves in the league but still a dead man walking if he has to go it alone.
The options are limited. Maybe go small with a frontline of Chris Webber,
Peja Stojakovic and Hedo Turkoglu, the rookie who is making a good showing in
his first high-pressure situation, and force O'Neal to defend Webber. If
Webber uses the advantage in speed and quickness, and the ability to play on
the perimeter, at least maybe the Kings can get Shaq in foul trouble and get
some baskets in the process. Webber will get swallowed whole at the other
end, but the time for conventional strategy long ago passed.
Here's another revolutionary thought. Double team O'Neal. Foul him. It
doesn't have to be Haq-a-Shaq, but conceding dunks and layins without four
guys going for the dog pile is only an invitation to get posterized. There is
the obvious drawback here as well. Kobe Bryant is a teammate and a monster
with wings, so he'll go for 44 just as easy. It's like on the first play of
Game 2: O'Neal got the ball in the post, Doug Christie came to help, and
Bryant cut down the lane, got the pass and went airborne. His dunk ricocheted
off the heel of the rim, but the possession eventually ended with an O'Neal
dunk anyway.
It's not just the Kings strategy that needs fixing, either. They head back
to the sanctuary of Arco needing an emotional boost and to regain their
composure, a strange thought for a team that had come to rely so much on its
resiliency, with three wins in the regular season after trailing by at least
20 points, a recovery after losing the opener at home in the first round and
then coming back from deficits of 19 and 17 points at Phoenix to advance. But
there they were in the locker room after Game 2, admitting to a lack of
intensity in the biggest game of the season and conceding they were
fractured by a third quarter in which a 43-43 tie became an 18-point deficit.
Someone asked Pollard later that night if the Kings were intimidated by
the O'Neal and the Lakers machine.
"No, but I would say our confidence is shaken a little bit," he said. "I
know mine is.
"I don't know how everybody else feels, but I'm worried at this point. If
you can't play hard, when can you? It's a little bit of a gutcheck for us. I
hate that cliche, and cliches in general, but it's true."
There's always this one:
Do the Kings lack heart?
"It may be that," Bobby Jackson said. "But I go out and play with every
drop of energy. I think some guys need to look at who has the intensity."
He meant besides the Lakers.
At least the Kings got out of Los Angeles alive, albeit barely, comforted
at least in that they get to now be at home at 0-2. Be it ever so humbling.
Scott Howard-Cooper covers the NBA for the Sacramento Bee and is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
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