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Zach LaVine says ‘this isn’t for me anymore’ and takes a support role next to Darius Acuff Jr.: ‘He’s gonna be real special’
After scoring 31 in the Kings’ 1-10 loss to Orlando, Zach LaVine said his job now is to support rookie Darius Acuff Jr., playing more off the ball, and shared what he told his former Bulls teammate Wendell Carter Jr.
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Zach LaVine has spent 12 seasons as a scorer, and he says that is no longer the job. After the Sacramento Kings lost 107-100 to the Orlando Magic on Tuesday night to fall to 1-10, the two-time All-Star said his role now is to support rookie Darius Acuff Jr..
Asked whether the coaching staff wanted him to supply more of the scoring punch, LaVine said scoring is “what I hang my hat on,” and that he has done it “at a very high level” at all three levels. Then he turned to Acuff.
“But this is different. Darius is special, and this isn’t for me anymore,” LaVine said. “I gotta be able to try to support him the best I can. If that’s playing off the ball a little bit more, if that’s in catch-and-shoot situations, that’s the role I’m in now. I can go out and get it, obviously. Like, you tell me to go score, I’ll do that for sure. But I’m trying to be in the best support role I can for him, ’cause he’s gonna be real special, man.”
LaVine’s full postgame press conference after the loss to Orlando. Video posted by James Ham on X.
“I think that’s my duty now”
LaVine said he knows what Acuff is going through. He was 22 when Minnesota traded him to Chicago in 2017, and he spent most of the next seven and a half years as the face of a Bulls team that made the playoffs once.
“I’ve been in that situation before, where I was young, on a team that wasn’t winning, the face of a franchise,” he said. “And I’ve had my ups and downs with that. I’ve had my mistakes, obviously. But if I can share any wisdom or help, I think that’s my duty now.”
Acuff, the No. 7 pick out of Arkansas, turns 20 on Monday. He scored 29 points with six assists on Tuesday and is averaging 26.2 points and 7.3 assists. His 288 points are the most by a rookie through 11 games since Michael Jordan had 289 in 1984. The Kings have built their offense around him, and LaVine said the ball is “gonna be in D.A.’s hands a lot.”
Six threes on nine attempts
LaVine played the role he described and still led Sacramento with 31 points. He shot 10-of-16 from the field, made a season-high six threes on nine attempts and went 5-of-5 at the free-throw line in 33 minutes. Two of the threes came late, when he scored eight straight Kings points to cut a 103-90 deficit to 103-98 with 44.7 seconds left. Orlando held on behind Franz Wagner’s season-high 33.
Through 11 games he is averaging 22.3 points on 14.6 shots, shooting 50.3% from the field and 38.3% from three. He also had five of the Kings’ 21 turnovers on Tuesday, and he took the blame for them.
“I’ve got that a couple of games this year where I’m just throwing the ball, where I have careless turnovers. It’s a momentum shifter, and it sucks,” he said. “So I take that one on me. We’re giving away too many points, and we’re fighting really hard, we’re coming back, and those self-inflicted wounds, those really hurt. So I’m more upset about those on myself.”
He left for the locker room in the second half after turning his ankle, then came back in. “I rolled the hell out of my ankle, but I’ll be okay,” he said.
Wendell Carter Jr., “my rookie in Chicago”
The game ended with Wendell Carter Jr. dunking in the final seconds, after Wagner’s free throws had already put it away, and LaVine had words with him. Carter was a rookie with the Bulls in 2018-19, when LaVine was their leading scorer.
“Wendell was my rookie in Chicago, and he went down and scored, and I was like, ‘Why you do that?’ And he kind of pulled me back on my heels a little bit,” LaVine said. “He said, ‘Zach, I’ve seen you beat multiple teams with all the threes at the end of the game. You think I’m going to give you a chance?’ So I kind of was like, ‘Okay, you got me on that one.’”
“I don’t think it was malicious,” he added. “Everything that we have is on edge right now. We have a little more animosity, and that’s my guy at the end of the day, so I’m not going to put too much into it.”
“It’s us versus everybody else”
Sacramento is 0-6 at home and off to its first 1-10 start since 1990, and the frustration showed after the game. Acuff, asked how much the record was taking a toll on him, said: “A lot. I’m not a loser. So it’s not fun.”
Acuff on the 1-10 start: “1-10 just doesn’t sound right.” Video posted by Brenden Nunes on X.
LaVine, 31, said the outside noise is coming and that it is on the veterans to keep the group together.
“There’s gonna be a lot of finger pointing. I think for us, we gotta try to stay together, from the front office down. We all have the same record right now, and it’s us versus everybody else,” he said. “We’re trending in the right area. It feels a lot better out there. We’ve done a lot of better things, but we just got to clean up the small mistakes, myself included, to where we put together a full 48.”
LaVine on keeping the Kings together. Video posted by Brenden Nunes on X.
“The situation is what it is, but this is our job,” he said. “At least as a vet, myself, to keep guys uplifted, bringing it each and every day, bringing it to practice, regardless of how you’re feeling. I think that’s just part of it.”
Jason Anderson, who covers the Kings, wrote on Wednesday that LaVine’s locker-room presence last season seemed “somewhere between neutral and negative,” and that this season he has been “impressed and pleasantly surprised by his leadership and decorum.”
The Kings host the Portland Trail Blazers on Friday at 10 p.m. ET (5 a.m. Saturday in Cairo).
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