In a scheduling anomaly, the Kings opened their road trip with a Saturday matinee at Madison Square Garden. With the New York Rangers playing the New Jersey Devils later in the evening, the Knicks and the Kings drew the short straw, and an early morning wake-up call.
With a noon ET tip-off time, the Kings looked every bit the part of a West Coast team sleepwalking through the first quarter. But they woke up in the next three quarters, and opened a critical four-game road trip with a 102-94 win over the Knicks.
Sacramento played with plenty of energy but couldn’t get the ball to go through the basket. In the first 12 minutes of play, the Kings shot just 8 of 28 (28.6 percent) from the field and 3 of 10 from long range.
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“We got shots that we wanted, we got a lot of open shots in the first quarter. Sometimes the ball just doesn’t go in,” Kings guard De’Aaron Fox told reporters in New York after the win.
The Kings trailed by as many as 15 in the quarter, but Fox and Nemanja Bjelica kept the game from being a complete blowout early.
“We didn’t make shots, but we had good looks, and they probably feel the same way, but I felt like we were trying,” Kings coach Dave Joerger said.
Slowly, the Kings began to awake from their slumber as the game wore on. Harrison Barnes started to get to the free-throw line, and Willie Cauley-Stein ran the floor hard. But through the first half, leading Kings scorer Buddy Hield was cold as ice.
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Hield finished the first half with four points on 2-of-12 shooting from the field, and missed all five of his shots from long range.
“I always tell him, keep shooting,” Fox said. “He’s probably going to keep shooting anyways, but just to let him know we’ve still got confidence in him. There’s not too many games where Buddy is off for the entire game.”
Despite the team shooting just 32 percent from the field in the first half, the Kings led 48-46 going to the break.
Sacramento looked like a different team in the third quarter. Hield caught fire from the perimeter, hitting 4 of 6 from long range to finish the quarter with 14 of his 19 points overall.
Fox continued to shine as well, scoring five points and dishing out six assists in the third to help push the Kings’ lead to 80-68 heading to the final 12 minutes.
But Joerger turned to the second unit to begin the fourth, and the lead instantly evaporated. The Kings’ coach was forced to turn back to his starters to finish off a game that shouldn’t have been that close.
Where Hield was brilliant in the third, Fox was in another league in the final seven minutes. The speedy point guard consistently got to his favorite spot on the floor, and he made the Knicks pay.
“We go at what’s working, and at that time, I was the guy scoring, so we just kind of kept going to it,” Fox said.
[RELATED: Hield continues to improve in breakout season]
Fox scored 12 points down the stretch on a perfect 5-of-5 shooting from the field. He nearly matched his career high in scoring, finishing with 30 points, eight assists and five rebounds in 37 minutes of action.
“He’s ultra competitive, man, he takes a challenge,” Joerger said of Fox following the game.
It wasn’t pretty, but the Kings got the victory they needed. They improved to 33-32 on the season, and now trail the San Antonio Spurs for the eighth playoff spot in the Western Conference by 3.5 games with 17 games remaining.
“It’s always good to start a road trip off with a win,” Fox told NBC Sports California’s Grant Napear and Doug Christie following the game. “We knew we needed this win. We need all the wins.”
The Kings have Sunday off before taking on the Washington Wizards on Monday night at Capital One Arena. It’s another must-win game for the Kings, as they attempt to chase down the Spurs.