| Kings Rely On Muscle From Perimeter Authored by Douglas Benton - April 30, 2006 - 2:33 am
With the Kings returning to Arco Arena on Friday night, the Sacramento faithful saw their team in a 0-2 hole and looking like a team that was dead in the water. However, with the help of some buzzer-beating heroics from second-year guard Kevin Martin, the Kings are now back in the series and now have seemed to find a way to stay competitive with the defending champion Spurs.
After an embarrassing opening game loss that had some thinking that the Kings might have called it a year, they quickly bounded back and now seem to have found a few chinks in the Spurs’ armor. It starts with Bonzi Wells and Ron Artest for the Kings, who pack maybe the most powerful 2-3 combination in the league, which spells trouble for San Antonio.
With lightweights like Manu Ginobili, Bruce Bowen, and Brent Berry having the primary responsibilities of slowing down this attack, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Kings decided to go down low for the majority of their points Friday night. While each of these players, along with Michael Finley, provide a nice talent group from the guard/forward, they still can’t match up physically with either Wells or Artest.
This is one of the reasons why the Kings repeatedly went to the low post with each of these players because it forced the Spurs to either double and leave a shooter open, or watch as Wells and Artest go where they pleased.
So, as Game 4 approaches quickly Sunday night, it should be a healthy dose of this low post offense for the Kings and it will depend on the adjustments made by Greg Popovich and his staff on whether or not the Spurs go back to San Antonio goes back home even or looking to finish this series.
With the lack of answers from the roster itself and the way they lost the game on a buzzer-beater after having the game in their hands, I think this will be an even series heading back to San Antonio for Game 5. |
