Brown says Kings fans ‘deserve better’ after loss to Pacers originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SACRAMENTO – Ten days ago, the Kings were riding a three-game winning streak and appeared poised to emerge as contenders in the NBA’s Western Conference.

Four defeats in a row – all at the Golden 1 Center – the mood in the state capital is completely different.

Instead of emerging as contenders, the Kings now look more realistically like a team that will fight to get into the NBA play-in tournament, similar to last season.

Sunday’s 122-95 home loss to the Indiana Pacers was just the latest setback.

The Pacers entered the day with a sub-.500 record and were the No. 8 seed in the Eastern Conference, but handled the Kings fairly easily.

“Their tempo, whether it was full court or in the half court, was at a high level,” Kings coach Mike Brown said. “We were always a step or at least half a step behind them when it came to defending them in the second half.”

Even though it came three days before Christmas, it was hardly the kind of performance and effort you’d expect from a team that still sees itself as a legitimate playoff contender.

After a somewhat sluggish and shaky first half, the Kings simply stopped playing in the second half. The Pacers scored 70 points in the final two quarters to cruise to a 27-point win, Sacramento’s most lopsided loss of the season.

This came on the heels of the Kings’ one-point loss to the Denver Nuggets, followed by two straight losses to the Los Angeles Lakers.

Had they gotten the win against the Nuggets, split the two games with the Lakers, and then held serve at home against the Pacers, the outlook for the Kings would have been much more optimistic and rosy than it is now.

The game got so bad on Sunday that fans at the Golden 1 Center kept booing the Kings in the second half.

“The fans definitely deserve better than what we showed today,” Brown said. “When you look in the mirror you want to say that you left everything on the floor and tried to play the right way. It’s understandable why the fans left it up to us.”

Brown remains confident that the situation is fixable, even if a few adjustments are needed here and there. The Kings coach slightly mixed up his rotations against the Pacers in hopes of igniting a spark, but the changes didn’t produce the desired result.

“That’s pretty low,” Brown admitted. “We had some other difficult moments. But I firmly believe that you can never get too high when things are going well. That will change immediately in this league. If things don’t go well, things will fall apart, so don’t go too deep.”

Perhaps no one knows this better than Malik Monk.

The veteran guard never had a winning season in his first four NBA seasons in Charlotte and then endured a brutal losing season with the Los Angeles Lakers.

What the Kings have to do now is essentially a speed bump compared to what Monk has been through in the past. He has drawn on those experiences as he tries to help Sacramento navigate its way through the current crisis.

“We’ll have a great half, then we’ll go back to playing one-pass shots, no-pass shots and things like that,” Monk said when asked what the problems seem to be. “We just have to keep moving the ball, and I feel like that’s contagious.”

There has been talk of a possible separation between Brown and his team and the players in the Kings’ locker room.

No one has addressed this issue publicly, but Brown remains confident in the coaching staff’s approach.

“We’ve been doing this for almost two and a half years now and we’ve done it at a pretty high level,” Brown said. “So I’m going to keep preaching it and try to make a little adjustment here, a little adjustment there and continue to look for someone who can step up.

“I can’t just sit back and let things happen and say everything will be fine because we all want more than that. “The reality is that the fans definitely deserve more.”

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