Sports

LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers are the winners of the very first NBA In-Season Tournament. They will go home with the NBA Cup and $500,000 to each player and coach. If you know me, you know I’m not thrilled about the Lakers winning the tournament, but I’m mostly disappointed that the final game was not as good as I thought it would be. At least the first half of the game was close, but the Lakers pretty much dominated the second half. Congratulations to the Lakers; I’m looking forward to watching this tournament for years to come.

As for the Sacramento Kings, we had two games this week that couldn’t have been more different. First, the Kings played the Brooklyn Nets on Monday, December 11th, and they broke a Kings franchise record by scoring 25 3-pointers. The Kings were on fire on Monday, hitting an unbelievable 55.6% from the 3-point line. They also had a whopping 38 assists; they were doing great at moving the ball. They beat the Nets, 131-118.

The very next day, Tuesday, December 12th, they traveled down to Los Angeles to play the Clippers, and they shot 37.9% from 3 and had 27 assists. Now, those numbers are actually perfectly respectable, right around the Kings average per game, and don’t explain why the Kings lost horribly to the Clippers, 119-99. The Kings have been terrible on the second night of back-to-backs; they’ve lost on the second night of all three back-to-back games they’ve had this year. And it’s not a good excuse; the Clippers themselves were on a second night of a back-to-back, and they were looking great. Part of being a good basketball team is being able to perform on back-to-back nights, and if I’m not mistaken, they were pretty good on back-to-backs last year, so I’m not sure what is going on this year; they just don’t look like themselves. They’ll have another chance to show some improvement in a back-to-back later this month, where they will travel from Phoenix after playing the Suns to Minnesota to play the Timberwolves.

Oh, and the Kings had another win last week, on Friday, December 8th, against the Phoenix Suns, 114-106. Friday just seems like so long ago, I almost forgot to mention it; time kind of becomes a blur in the holiday season.

Let’s look at this coming week’s schedule: the Kings come back home for a six-game home stand starting with the Oklahoma City Thunder on Thursday, December 14th; the Utah Jazz on Saturday, December 16th; the Washington Wizards on Monday, December 18th; and the Boston Celtics on Wednesday, December 20th. I have high hopes for these next few games and can’t wait to see how they play against the Thunder and the Celtics, two of the top teams in the league. Let’s light that beam!