The Sacramento Kings did not have a great end to 2017. The Memphis Grizzlies completely outplayed the Kings from the tip on Sacramento's home floor and looked utterly dominant en route to a 114-96 win.

The loss clearly did not sit well with Kings head coach Dave Joerger, who said after the game that each individual member of the team must take responsibility for the defeat and learn from it.

“Each guy just has to own his own stuff,” Joerger said per NBC Sports Bay Area’s James Ham. “It’s not a finger pointing deal, it’s a ‘how can I get better?’ This is a little bit part of the process of maturing, locking in and getting focused.”

Veteran point guard George Hill also echoed his head coach’s words of each player doing some self-examination and finding out what he can do to improve the team.

“Like coach said, each and every one of us [needs] to look in the mirror and figure out what we can do better,” Hill said. “It’s not about making shots or this or that. How can we help the team get better in every aspect of the game.”

As one of the youngest teams in the entire league, the Kings are bound for those types of inexplicably bad performances from time to time. Joerger and Hill’s pointed comments about looking in the mirror had their young players specifically in mind.

Painful experiences like that Grizzlies loss are just part of the learning process for the young Kings. They must take all those difficult lessons to heart as their Dave Joerger and George Hill suggest in order to prevent more disheartening defeats from becoming a regular occurrence.