BOSTON (AP) The
Boston Celtics enjoyed a season-high scoring day to keep their current winning stretch rolling along.
Avery Bradley scored 25 points,
Isiah Thomas had 22 and the
Celtics held off the
Kings 128-119 on
Sunday for their ninth win in 10 games.
"
Whenever you get a chance to run up and down and move the ball like we did tonight, it's fun,"
Bradley said. "And not only that, we were making shots. When everybody's making shots, everybody's happy."
The loss may also fuel recent reports on the shaky status of
Sacramento coach
George Karl's future.
Jared Sullinger matched his season high with 21 points, reserve
Tyler Zeller had a season high 17 with seven rebounds and
Thomas added nine assists for
Boston, which committed a season high 24 turnovers but shot 56 percent.
"
The one thing is our offense has been pretty good the last 10 games," Boston coach
Brad Stevens said. "I don't think we're 128 points good. We're probably due for games like that. You're going to have games like the other night when we're struggling to get to
100."
Boston's previous high was
120 points in a win over
Brooklyn on Nov. 20.
DeMarcus Cousins led Sacramento with 31 points.
Marco Belinelli and
Darren Collison each had 16 points.
The Kings have lost seven of eight, prompting rumors about
Karl's possible firing in the near future.
"We're in a losing mode," Karl said. "We're losing games, but our basketball has not been bad basketball.
It's been not good enough to win basketball, which happens in the
NBA every night.
Just because you lose doesn't mean you don't play good basketball."
The Kings had sliced a 21-point deficit to 97-91 early in the final quarter before Bradley nailed a pair of
3-pointers and scored eight points during a 15-6 spree that was capped by
Evan Turner's 3-point play with just less than 6 minutes to play.
"Biggest thing I guess we've got to find a better energy and effort as a team," said
Cousins, who said after Friday's loss that the team had a "bigger issue than just energy and effort" but wouldn't elaborate.
"We've got to find a solution, because right now whatever we're doing isn't working," he said following the loss to Boston.
Sacramento closed it to five points with under 2 minutes left, but Thomas scored nine of 11 points for Boston to seal it.
Coming off a buzzer-beating
3-point shot by Bradley that lifted Boston to an improbable victory in
Cleveland on Friday night, the Celtics started fast, nailing five of their initial seven on 3-point attempts to pull to a 38-22 edge late in the first quarter.
The Kings cut it to 59-51 before Boston went on a 9-0 spree en route to a 74-58 halftime lead.
The Celtics pushed their advantage to 21 points on Thomas' 3 from the right wing early in the third, but the Kings followed with a 15-2 run to close the gap to 95-87 after three.
I do not own anything in this video. No
Copyright Infringement Is Intended. I don't take any credits from this video. I do not claim ownership of the footage displayed in this video. Any Audiovisual content in this video is not owned by me. But owned by NBA.
All rights reserved to NBA.
Visit their Website at www.nba.com
- published: 08 Feb 2016
- views: 14606