Fox scores 43 and Sabonis has 34-point double-double ... but Kings get blasted by Blazers?
De’Aaron Fox almost had a career night and Domantas Sabonis turned in another dominant performance, but somehow that was not enough against one of the worst teams in the NBA.
Anfernee Simons scored 29 points to lead the Portland Trail Blazers to a 130-113 victory over the Kings on Tuesday night before a crowd of 18,585 at Moda Center. Undrafted 27-year-old rookie Duop Reath came off the bench to post career highs of 25 points and nine rebounds.
Fox scored 43 points for the Kings (17-12), finishing one shy of his career high. Sabonis had a season-high 34 points, 12 rebounds and five assists, posting his 12th consecutive double-double and his 25th of the season.
Fox and Sabonis combined for 77 points on 30-of-45 shooting. Sabonis went 14 of 19 from the field. Fox went 16 of 26 with a career-high seven 3-point goals on 15 attempts, but the rest of the team struggled, contributing only 36 points while going 15 of 48 (.313) from the field and 3 of 27 (.111) from 3-point range.
“Obviously, we didn’t do a good job defensively,” Kings coach Mike Brown said. “That’s been our Achilles’ heel for a while now, and we give up 130 points on 50% from the field and allow their bench, especially, to get going the way they did, bodes for a long night. You add that with us going 3 for 27 from the 3-point line if you take Foxy out of the equation, that’s not good.”
Fox posted his fourth 40-point game of the season and the 10th of his career tonight, passing DeMarcus Cousins for the fourth-most 40-point games in franchise history.
Malcolm Brogdon had 19 points, five rebounds and six assists for the Blazers (8-21), who won despite the absences of Shaedon Sharpe and Deandre Ayton. Scoot Henderson and Jabari Walker came off the bench to score 17 points apiece for Portland, which had lost nine of its last 10 games. Henderson also recorded a career-high 11 assists.
The Blazers were 29th in the NBA in scoring going into the game, but they scored a season-high 130 against Sacramento’s defense.
The Kings were fully healthy for the first time this season after Malik Monk and Alex Len were cleared to play earlier in the day. Monk returned after missing one game due to right foot irritation. Len returned after missing six weeks with a high right ankle sprain.
The Kings could have showcased their firepower and depth against an inferior opponent to open a three-game road trip, but that didn’t happen. Len only logged two minutes and Monk struggled, scoring seven points on 3-of-11 shooting from the field and 1-of-7 shooting from 3-point range.
Sabonis scored 14 points on 6-of-8 shooting to help the Kings take a 33-32 lead at the end of the first quarter. The Kings shot 53.8% in the opening period, but they went 1 of 9 from 3-point range while allowing the Blazers to shoot 54.5% from the field and 50% from long distance.
Those struggles continued in the second quarter as Portland staged a 10-0 run to take a 53-40 lead on a basket by Henderson. The Blazers went up by 19 on a corner 3-pointer by Reath before the Kings mounted a 9-0 run to cut the deficit to 10.
The Kings trailed 67-60 at the half after Fox came up with a steal and hit a pullup 3 with 0.6 seconds remaining. Fox and Sabonis combined for 41 points on 18-of-22 shooting in the first half while the rest of the team went 8 of 25 from the field and 1 of 15 from 3-point range.
At the start of the second half, the Kings went back to Sabonis, who converted a three-point play on the first possession to cut the deficit to four. The Kings got within three on another three-point play by Sabonis with 4:37 to play in the third quarter, but they trailed 104-96 going into the fourth.
The Kings still had a chance for a comeback victory, but they shot 38.1% and went 2 of 12 from 3-point range while giving up six offensive rebounds in the fourth quarter.
“We’re not where we need to be defensively on a consistent basis,” Brown said. “We’ve shown flashes of it, and as a group, we want to outscore our opponent, and we don’t do a good job of just sitting down and trying to generate consecutive stops in a row. ... We turned it into a track meet and thought we’d be able to beat them on the scoreboard only, and we weren’t focused really on trying to slow them down and they never felt us the entire night.”
Blazers coach Chauncey Billups was pleased to see his team get back to defending at a high level after experiencing some lapses in recent weeks.
“We wanted to just get back to what we’ve been trying to do the whole time, and I thought today, really from start to finish, we did,” Billups said. “Playing against an offensive juggernaut, knowing that our defense would be challenged today, you look at what De’Aaron and also Sabonis did, I mean, it was impressive, but we were able to absorb it because we got so many different efforts from everybody.”
Murray and Huerter
Two of Sacramento’s starters combined for 10 points on 4-of-19 shooting. Keegan Murray was held to five points in 35:31, going 2 of 11 from the field and 1 of 7 from 3-point range. Kevin Huerter had five points in 21:42, going 2 of 8 from the field and 1 of 5 from beyond the arc.
Bench scoring
The Blazers outscored the Kings 65-17 in points off the bench. Keon Ellis, Trey Lyles and Sasha Vezenkov combined for zero points in 33 minutes.
Reath went 9 of 15 from the field and 4 of 8 from 3-point range for the Blazers, easily eclipsing his previous career high of 16 points against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Nov. 16.
Up next
The Kings will head east to face the Atlanta Hawks on Friday in the second game of a three-game road trip.
The Hawks (12-18) have lost three in a row. They are coming off a 118-113 loss to the Chicago Bulls. Trae Young was held to 21 points on 6-of-17 shooting in that game, ending a streak of seven consecutive 30-point games.
Young is averaging 28.3 points and 11.2 assists. He is shooting 43.6% on 20.4 field-goal attempts per game. He is shooting a career-best 39.1% from 3-point range on 9.2 attempts per game.
