Cousins ties franchise mark with 56, Kings lose to Hornets in 2OT
It’s no great statement to say that the Sacramento Kings rely on DeMarcus Cousins. Now holding on to the final playoff spot in the West, the 20-24 Kings have gone just 1-7 in games without their top player, a mark that doesn’t include key moments he’s missed due to ejections and foul-outs. He’s the difference between a playoff contender and a lottery team.
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Cousins showed his value with both his presence and absence in Monday’s game against the Charlotte Hornets at Sleep Train Arena. Cousins exploded for 56 points (21-of-30 FG, 13-of-16 FT) just one game after setting his previous career high with 48 points in a win over the Indiana Pacers on Saturday, a performance that helped him earn Western Conference Player of the Week honors. Monday’s new personal best also matched a Kings franchise record set by none other than Oscar Robertson with the Cincinnati Royals more than 51 years ago.
Unfortunately for Sacramento, Cousins’s night came to an end earlier than anticipated. The Kings managed to make it to a second extra period after a missed Kemba Walker free throw with the game tied at 115-115 with 0.6 seconds remaining in regulation and Willie Cauley-Stein’s block of a Kemba Walker lay-up at 124-124 at the end of the first overtime. Yet Cousins, always a threat for six fouls, fouled out with 3:30 on the clock on what initially looked like an and-one putback that would have given the Kings a four-point lead. Replays showed that Cousins knocked Frank Kaminsky with a powerful move, but it still appeared to be a tough way for the best player on the floor to leave the game.
The disqualification and a previous shot to the face for Rudy Gay left the Kings without their two best scorers for the final few minutes, and they responded by scoring just two more points. They came on a Cauley-Stein dunk that gave the Kings a 128-126 lead with 11 seconds left. But that gave the Hornets another chance, and they took advantage with the eighth three-pointer of the game for Troy Daniels:
Darren Collison an off-balance jumper at the buzzer to confirm Charlotte’s 129-128 win. Despite some reasonable concerns that he traveled before taking the game-winner, Daniels finished with a career-high 28 points on 10-of-15 from the field and 8-of-11 from deep in 31 minutes, helping to offset a 5-of-25 game for the previously on-fire Walker and a 1-of-10 showing for Kaminsky. The Hornets have climbed back to 22-23 after losing nine of 10 and now sit just 1 1/2 games behind the Pacers for the East’s No. 8 spot.
The Kings can at least proceed with confidence that Cousins remains a handful for opposing defenses (and sometimes also George Karl). Win or lose, he’s one of the most dominant individual forces in the league right now.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
