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 "What can I tell you?" he said. "I have a crazy team, and I'm kind
of a crazy guy, so ..."
So it was that the Kings played without their starting point guard
and NBA assists leader, turned over the ball more than two dozen
times without him, and still ended a nearly two-year stretch of
misery against the Houston Rockets with a 107-97 victory at Sleep
Train Arena on Tuesday night.
"I don't know if I've ever won a game where my team gave up (almost)
30 turnovers," Karl said. "Fortunately, we forced a lot of turnovers
ourselves, and our turnovers didn't turn into a lot of points."
With point guard Rajon Rondo out because of a one-game suspension,
the Kings (10-15) turned over the ball a season-worst 29 times.
However, they still beat Houston for the first in nine games since
Dec. 31, 2013, primarily because Houston converted those turnovers
into only 29 points.
Sacramento center DeMarcus Cousins scored 26 points and grabbed 12
rebounds, and point guard Darren Collison made up for Rondo's
absence with 14 points and 13 assists.
Rondo, the NBA's assist leader at 11.0 per game, missed the game
after for hurling gay slurs at referee Bill Kennedy during a game
against the Boston Celtics in Mexico City on Dec. 3.
"We know what kind of player Rondo is, but when somebody goes down,
you've still gotta win games," Kings forward Rudy Gay said. "Darren
did a good job setting the pace for this game."
Collison started for only the third time all season and played a
season-high 41 minutes. He produced four assists in the game's first
three minutes and six in the first 12. His 13 assists were a season
high.
Guard James Harden scored 33 points to pace the Rockets (12-14), who
have lost the opening two games of a three-game road trip. Harden
has scored at least 30 points in his past six visits to Sacramento.
Guards Jason Terry and Patrick Beverley each scored 14 points for
the Rockets, who fell behind by 16 points in the third quarter but
closed the gap to 82-74 entering the final period with most of their
reserve unit on the floor.
"(The Kings) came out in the third quarter and got open looks, and
the message is that lot of players on this team are champing for
playing time, and we're going to go with the guys that go after it,"
Rockets interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff said.
Houston's rally fizzled when Sacramento opened the final quarter
with a 11-4 run for a 93-78 lead.
"Whatever it was, we need to play harder," Harden said. "We need to
figure it out. That's what (Bickerstaff) was trying to make, that's
the type of message he was trying to send."
Sacramento forward Omri Casspi scored 19 points and added six
assists and six assists as the Kings won their third straight to
match their longest win streak of the season. They also beat the
Rockets for only the fifth time in 21 games since April 12, 2010.
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Kings forward Rudy Gay added 17 points and 13 rebounds, and he threw
down a dunk over Beverley off a fastbreak with less than two minutes
left that sealed the contest. However, Karl said after the game he
was more impressed with Gay's performance on the defensive end,
where Gay compiled six steals and helped contain Houston forward
Trevor Ariza to 10 points.
"His defense over the past five or six games has really improved,"
Karl said.
As expected, both teams got up and down the court, and the pace was
frenetic.
The Kings, the third-highest scoring team in the league (105 points
per game) sprinted to an 11-2 lead in the first quarter, then put
together a 13-2 run late in the first half against the NBA's
fourth-worst defense (107.1).
The Rockets, the NBA's fourth-ranked offense (104.1), used their own
13-2 run to erase that first-quarter deficit. They scored 19 points
in the final 6 1/2 minutes of the third quarter against the league's
second-worst defense (107.7) to reduce a 15-point deficit to eight
points entering the final period.
NOTES: Kings G Rajon Rondo issued another apology to referee Bill
Kennedy for hurling gay slurs toward him after being ejected from a
game against Boston on Dec. 3. "I want to be clear, from the bottom
of my heart, that I am truly sorry for what I said to Bill," Rondo
said in a statement posted on the team's website Tuesday, a day
after he addressed the suspension in questionable fashion on
Twitter. "There is no place on or off the court for language that
disrespects anyone's sexual orientation. This is not who I am or
what I believe, and I will strive every day to be a better person."
... Rockets F Dwight Howard, the subject of trade rumors circulating
on the Internet and social media, has played in both games of
back-to-back contests three of the past four times Houston has had
them. ... The Kings' run of using the same lineup ended at a
season-high four straight games because of Rondo's suspension. They
have used 13 starting lineups in 25 games. ... G James Harden has
averaged 40.8 points in his past four games at Sacramento and 34.1
in his seven contests there as a Rocket.
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