San Antonio Spurs: 3 Things that stood out in frustrating loss to the Kings

The San Antonio Spurs couldn’t close out the Sacramento Kings on Monday

If the San Antonio Spurs were riding high coming into Monday night’s game with the Sacramento Kings, who could blame them? They’d just defeated the Chicago Bulls in decisive fashion on Saturday and were approaching what appeared to be the easiest part of their nine-game homestand.

Still, it would’ve been a mistake to overlook a Kings team that had just won six of their last seven games and had the Western Conference Player of the week in De’Aaron Fox leading the way.

Slow starts have bothered the Spurs in the past but that wasn’t true on Monday. They were hot out of the gate, pulling away to a 31-27 lead after the first quarter. Fueled by outstanding performances from Dejounte Murray and Jakob Poeltl, it looked like the Spurs were on their way to another impressive win.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case in the end. Sacramento blew open a lead of their own during the second quarter and then spent the rest of the game holding off comeback attempt after comeback attempt.

There were definitely frustrating points in the loss but there were some positive takeaways as well. Here’s what stood out in Monday night’s game.

Will the San Antonio Spurs start defending the long ball better?

One of the things that has stood out most about the San Antonio Spurs’ recent struggles at home has been how much opponents have been punishing them with the three. That was clear last night as the Kings made 18 of their 36 three-point attempts and finished with a +24 point advantage from behind the arc.

It wasn’t just one player who hurt the Spurs either. Fox got involved, Buddy Hield hit 5 of 9, Harrison Barnes, Terence Davis, and Mo Harkless all contributed three of their own. It was a constant cycle of the Spurs defense breaking down and the Kings finding open players for easy looks from deep.

This has been a reoccurring trend for San Antonio. They let the LA Clippers post +15 and +30 point advantages from behind the arc in their two losses to them last week and the Hornets outscored them from deep as well.

There are two ways the Spurs can eat into these deficits. Getting Lonnie Walker and his three-point shooting will help but the more important part is defense. Murray and Derrick White both stressed the importance of improving on that end of the floor before Wednesday night’s rematch. Let’s hope they can sit down as a team, figure out what went wrong, and come back better prepared tomorrow night.

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