Bogdan Bogdanovic is clearly frustrated at his own inability to force the Kings to acquire a third Serbian for their team, thus forming the dreaded and unstoppable Serbian Superteam in Sacramento (SSS). No matter how many Serbians he approaches with visions of championship rings and promises of a free-flowing Serb-based offense, he just can’t convince anybody to join him on the Kings, and Vlade Divac’s reluctance to work the phones for Serb-based trades isn’t helping matters. Meanwhile, Nemanja Bjelica is also holding back Bogdanovic’s SSS aspirations by being passive about further Serb acquisition, as if a new Serb player is just going to show up at the bubble on day ready to play.
To let off some steam, Bogdanovic is just going out there and getting buckets. Knowing that going 0-of-14 in one game (avoiding total futility by hitting a single garbage-time bucket) would set back in his progress in convincing the world that the SSS needs to happen, he scored 35 and now 27 points in the two following games. It’s like he’s saying to Vlade, “look how good one Serbian is…imagine if we had three of them!”
Bogdanovic is also exerting what little control he has over his team by slowly forcing Buddy Hield out of the rotation. Hield only got 20 minutes in this one, while Bogdanovic got 35. Meanwhile, DaQuan Jeffries got 25 minutes. Maybe Bogdanovic’s strategy is to force every other non-Serb player to request a buyout from the team, and then, when the cupboards are bare, they can go out and acquire the entire Serbian national team plus a few extra Serbs. He’s playing the long game and I like it.