Last night the Los Angeles Clippers blasted the Sacramento Kings for 39 points in the first quarter, and the Kings fell into another early hole. The Clippers were scoring from a variety of ways, but most alarming was how they got to the rim with regularity. In that specific span, there was one players’ poor play that jumped out: Willie Cauley-Stein.
Sure, the Clippers were hitting a lot of perimeter shots, and lets be clear that Cauley-Stein is not the lone defensive weakness on this team. The Kings, between De’Aaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic, and Iman Shumpert, have a solid crop of defensive guards, but they are very small on the wings, with Shumpert and Bogdanovic often being forced to guard much bigger small forwards while playing out of their natural positions.