The Kings were playing their best defense of the 2023-24 NBA season during the month of March -- until Luka Dončić and the Dallas Mavericks came into town.
Aside from Dončić's 26 first-half points in Sacramento's 132-96 blowout loss to Dallas on Tuesday night at Golden 1 Center, the Kings did a relatively good job sticking to their scheme that had helped elevate their defense over the previous 13 games.
Until the second half.
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The Kings' recently successful defensive plot folded at the hands of the Mavericks, whose high-scoring offense lit them up with a 38-point third quarter. Dallas outscored Sacramento 38-23 in the third and 36-20 in the final frame.
"It's definitely a step back," Kings star point guard De'Aaron Fox said after the loss. "Even if you take out their transition points, which I think they had 20-something transition points and 18 fast break points, it felt like more. But even if you take away that, we still lose this game in a lot of other areas.
"So as an all-around basketball game, I think in the second half we played horrible and I think it was one of our worst halves of the season."
Before Tuesday's game, the Kings ranked fourth (108.9) in defensive rating and first in allowing the fewest opponent fast break points, with just 9.8, in the month of March.
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A big part in the defensive turnaround came from the impact of Kings guard Keon Ellis, whose uptick in minutes and opportunity paid dividends for Sacramento. But not even the Ellis Island effect worked against the Mavericks on Tuesday.
Kings coach Mike Brown took part of the blame, and he shared a matter-of-fact response to the pitiful defeat during his opening postgame statement.
“We got our behinds kicked, starting with me all the way down,” Brown said. “You’ve got to give Dallas credit. They actually played the way we like to play. They just kept the game simple.”
The way the Kings like to play, or have been playing over the last month, is fast-paced and physical. They didn't do either Tuesday night.
“I think they were more physical than us tonight,” Fox added. “They got to loose balls, which allowed them to get out in transition. They got a lot of easy buckets and we weren’t able to get stops.”
Fox finished with a team-high 18 points on 6-of-18 shooting from the field and 2 of 4 from 3-point range, with five rebounds, three assists, two steals and three turnovers in 32 minutes.
The All-Star guard wasn't the only primary Kings ballhandler with multiple turnovers. Domantas Sabonis, who finished with 12 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists, had four turnovers, and Malik Monk, who added 10 points off the bench, had three turnovers.
"I think we played a pretty good first half," Fox said. "But I think they just beat us on both ends of the court and the second half. Like I said, they were more physical, they got to the ball, they pressured us, and we weren't able to get into their offense -- and that led them to get easy buckets.
"And then once a good player sees the ball go in the basket, there's nothing you can do about it. And we didn't do a good job on the defensive end either."
Dallas shot 55.4 percent from the field while holding Sacramento to 38.9 percent. The Mavericks also had a 50-42 rebounding advantage while outscoring the Kings 44-38 in paint points and 18-5 in fastbreak points.
Both teams were coming off back-to-backs, but the Mavericks had to fly in from Utah while the Kings had the advantage of staying in Sacramento.
Those watching Tuesday's contest might have guessed the roles were reversed.
“We talked about playing fast and we had five fastbreak points,” Brown said. "To have five fastbreak points is not good enough, especially when they had 18. I don’t know why, but our transition passes were not good. We threw underhand passes. We threw off-balance passes over the top.
"We had to have three or four turnovers on passes in transition and that just cost us.”
Before Tuesday's game, Brown discussed the importance and benefits of a team facing adversity. That passionate pregame speech became his reality as he looks forward to seeing how the Kings respond in Friday's game against the Mavericks, in what will be the most important game of the season thus far.