Kings Blog and Q&A

OK, I thought last week in New Orleans was bad. And yes, it was. But what the Kings pulled off Tuesday night was amazing in the manner it fell apart.

Against the Hornets, the Kings were on the road and playing the second game of a back-to-back.

This time it was the warriors that played a night earlier and were on the road.

The Warriors were without two starters (Stephen Curry, Andris Biedrins) while the Hornets had a healthy Chris Paul and David West, their two best players.

Of the Kings' 21 losses, this might be the hardest to deal with. The Kings did everything they could to lose this game. The fundamental mistakes were glaring. Fouling three-point shooters, fouling late and putting the Warriors back on the free throw line to set up the last shot. Failing to rebound against a team without a true center and turnovers are just among the few issues last night.

Then there was the failure to execute line that popped up again.

A 16-point lead with 9:20 left in the game disappeared and the Kings went cold in overtime of their 117-109 loss to the Golden State Warriors.

Here's what some of the players and coach Paul Westphal had to say about what happened against the Warriors.

Carl Landry on how to fix the problems:

"I've got my ideas. I'm sure everybody has their ideas in this locker room. But it's up to the coaches to make sure we run what they want to run and we have to go with their ideas, not ours."

Landry on how basic mistakes cost the team the game:

"It's not all one person's fault. It's not all our fault or the coaches' fault. You can't pont the finger at one person. It goes both ways. But because we were unable to execute the outcome of the game is like it was (Tuesday). We took a loss and we'll continue to take L's if we don't do a good job in the fourth quarter."

Landry on Vladimir Radmanovic's game-tying three at the end of regulation:

"That was one play. He hit a three but that was one play. We gotta finish out games. That's just one play. The play before that I fouled right on the three and I think somebody fouled somebody else on the three before that. We just have to finish out games. That's just one play. It really didn't affect the game at all so to me we lost because we didn't play 48 minutes. We didn't execute and if we don't feel like it's a problem then it will be the same outcome everyday."

Darnell Jackson on the rebound the Kings didn't get with two seconds left that set up Radmanovic's three:

"Coach kept yelling over there to let guys know that we have to box out. Letting guys know that were in the game at the time that they were missing their free throws to get the rebounds and it just wasn't turning out that way. They were getting tips and they were getting the ball back. We just have to be smart as a team. We can't go for the pump fakes at the three-point line and that's what happened. They came down and they won the game."

DeMarcus Cousins on not getting the rebound with two seconds left:

"I should have had the rebound. I couldn't grab it. It was us tonight. We messed up tonight."
Westphal on players acting like the game was already won late:

"999 times out of a 1,000 the game is put away. You've just got to take care of business till the end. There are crazy endings in the NBA and we were the victim of one tonight."Westphal on the fourth quarter collapse:

"We were going inside, got ourselves the lead and then for some reason we stopped executing the same wahy. We started turing it over and didn't even give our defense a chance because (the Warriors) were running out and getting layups whenever that happened. The amazing turn of events, even down to the last minute, when we would keep fouling three-point shooters, giving up offensive rebounds on missed free throws, three-point step backs with two seconds. It's just amazing things happen. How do you explain those?"

--Jason Jones