Malik Monk did not only talk the talk but he also walked the walk in the Kings’ 127-126 comeback win over the Denver Nuggets at Golden 1 Center on Wednesday night.
The 24-year-old took accountability after the Kings’ 113-106 loss to Denver on Tuesday night. After the game, Monk took to Twitter and told Sacramento fans that he needs to be better and wasted no time backing up his talk.
Monk scored 33 points while shooting 12-of-21 from the field and hitting one of two clutch free throws with 0.7 seconds remaining in the game, which gave the Kings the win after being down by 11 points heading into the fourth quarter.
“I just take responsibility, even if it’s not my problem or my mistake,” Monk told reporters postgame. “I just take full responsibility on everything like that, man, because it just made me lock in a little bit more mentally and I was playing bad. I just let everybody know and let everybody know I was going to shake that.”
Going into Thursday’s game, Monk had not scored 20 or more points since Dec. 14 against the Toronto Raptors. But, while the Kings guard strung together a few underwhelming performances, he had the right mindset to dig himself out.
“You got to be consistent, man,” Monk added. “You’re going to have bad games, especially in the NBA; we play 82 of them.
“It’s always great to have a game back to back, man, especially because you just forget about the bad performance and just go in with a free mind. But my brother talked about it a lot since my rookie year. You can’t have two back-to-back bad games, so I just try not to do that.”
Kevin Huerter took to Twitter to shout out Monk for backing up his self-criticism, as many others praised the Kentucky product.
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Monk and the Kings will attempt to end the 2022 calendar year on a high note when they face off against the Utah Jazz at Golden 1 Center on Friday night.