Monday Musings: Players stepping up, finding their niche for Kings

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Know your role.

This is a simple concept, but one that has cost many NBA players a chance at a successful career. If you don’t accept who you are and how you fit into your current situation, then you won’t be around long.

Through the first couple weeks of the 2022-23 season, the focus in Sacramento has been to get the core group going and then grow from there. De’Aaron Fox was the first player to find his place in the system, followed by Domantas Sabonis and Kevin Huerter.

It took Harrison Barnes longer than expected to fit in, but you can now see why the Kings didn’t move on from the veteran. Malik Monk figured out his niche with the squad around game seven and has been incredible as the team’s leader of the second unit.

That should be the goal of every NBA player. Find your niche, become consistent in what is asked of you and then earn more minutes and more opportunity by staying within the parameters of your defined role.

It’s not hard to see how all of this can go wrong, especially with a young team. If you are good enough to make an NBA roster, then you were probably the No. 1 option on every team you ever played for from the time you were old enough to bounce a ball.

Taking a scorer and asking him to be something else takes sacrifice from the player. It also requires discipline and focus. The Kings aren’t a star heavy team. They need every player from the top of the rotation to the bottom to play to their strengths and fully buy in to the process.

“I feel like that’s what makes a team,” Fox said. “It’s not always about the best 2-3 guys on the team. Whenever you have guys that come in and guys haven’t played for a while and they come in and they know exactly what they need to do, that’s part of just being a professional. You don’t go out and you don’t play outside of yourself. You go in there, you do what you know you can do and you do what the coach is asking you to do and you do what the players expect you to do.”

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