Kings Get Revenge vs Portland in Win

by Matt George 

Just a couple weeks ago the Sacramento Kings blew a lead late in their 113-108 overtime loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. Monday, they had a chance to rectify that mistake back inside the Golden 1 Center. The final home game before a long east coast road trip, Sacramento took the lead early in the second quarter and never looked back as their bench propelled them to a 115-107 win.

“We’re playing hard, we’re defending, making extra efforts. Sometimes we’re outsized but we are scrapping like crazy,” said head coach Dave Jeorger, “Tonight was a situation where (Jusuf) Nurkic hurt us a lot last week and tonight we were aggressive”.

Nurkic demolished the Kings with 24 points and 23 rebounds in their earlier meeting. Monday he managed just six points and 11 boards.

Sacramento’s second unit outscored Portland’s 58 to 34. In fact, the Kings bench outscore their own starters by one point.

“They are starting to spend some time together and starting to get a rhythm. Marvin Bagley is returning from injury and he’s starting to find a rhythm and still working on it. Harry (Giles) and Marvin are doing a great job of gobbling up rebounds. Yogi Ferrell continues to push the pace and get into seams in early attacks so that as a team we can play with as many possessions as we can throughout the course of a game. Bogdanovic gives us two playmakers and you have guys that you can throw it to in the post. They are kind of figuring themselves out” said Joerger.

Marvin Bagley and Harry Giles made another noticeable impact off the bench. Despite fouling out, Bagley turned in 13 points and 11 rebounds in 23 minutes. Giles added 12 points, four rebounds, and a couple of assists and Bogdanovic dropped 18 on 80% shooting.

“We are still playing with the underdog mindset – (we) don’t think too low about us and don’t think too high about us,” said Giles.

Bagley added, “We (are) all the Scores. That’s our identity. We just have fun, come in and play hard. That gets us over the hump…”.

De’Aaron Fox narrowly missed a double-double with 16 points and nine assists. Buddy Hield led the team in scoring with 19 points on 70% shooting. Damian Lillard was the man for Portland, scoring a game-high 35 points. It took him 27 shots to get it.

The Kings went 3-0 over their three game stretch against teams on the second night of a back-to-back. The Kings take a 23-21 record onto a long road trip, their next six games away from Sacramento. They return to the Golden 1 Center on January 30th against the Atlanta Hawks.

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