For a few exciting fourth-quarter minutes, it seemed the Nets were on the verge of turning another blowout loss into a Brooklyn battle. Sacramento's Matt Barnes leveled the Nets' Sean Kilpatrick and was ejected with 9:35 left for a flagrant two foul.
Suddenly, a 20-point Kings lead was evaporating as the Nets responded with a 16-2 run to pull within six points. But that's where all the grit drained out of the Nets' hourglass as the Kings scored the next 19 straight points on their way to a 122-105 victory Sunday night at Barclays Center. It was the seventh straight loss for the Nets (4-12), who are showing signs they are what the forecasters thought they were after a promising 4-5 start.
DeMarcus Cousins dominated for the Kings (7-10) with 37 points and 11 rebounds, Rudy Gay added 22 points, eight rebounds and eight assists, and Darren Collison totaled 18 points. The Kings made 13 of 23 3-pointers (56.5 percent). Kilpatrick topped the Nets with 22 points, and Brook Lopez added 17 points and seven rebounds.
The Nets entered the game on a six-game losing streak in which they allowed 122.3 points and lost by an average margin of 19.7 points. Their defense and rebounding have been so relentlessly absent that some players began to speak of losing trust in each other at the defensive end.
Asked before the game about how he is handling the losing and if he's second-guessing himself, first-year coach Kenny Atkinson emphasized the importance of keeping the faith in all the changes he is instituting. "I've been through it," Atkinson said of a rebuild he helped with in Atlanta. "I remember with the Hawks we lost 15 out of 16, and we had some vets on our team.
"I remember we were so involved in the process, and we stuck to our principles and our habits. I think this early in the season with all the lineup changes we've had and looking back on our relatively respectable start, we're going to stick with our principles, stick with our habits, stick with our development plan. But again, a win helps you stick with that plan."
Bojan Bogdanovic provided some early energy with seven first-quarter points as the Nets opened a 22-14 lead. But soon enough, they were lapsing back into losing habits, allowing the Kings to put together a 27-14 run spanning from late in the first quarter to midway in the second for a 44-39 lead. Cousins had seven consecutive points in that stretch, but more importantly, the Kings scored on 11 of 13 possessions, including nine layups or dunks.
The Nets responded with an 11-0 surge as Kilpatrick had six points and an assist that helped them grab a 52-46 lead, but that margin shrank to 59-58 at halftime. At intermission, the Kings held a commanding 30-20 advantage in points in the paint.
If there has been one undeniable trend for the Nets this season, it's their tendency to let games spool out of control in the third quarter, and it happened yet again as the Kings drained three straight threes to ignite a 22-8 run in which Gay and Cousins each scored five points on the way to building an 82-72 lead. The final basket in that stretch was a lob pass by Barnes that hit the backboard and went in for a three-pointer.
Another 13-0 run led by Cousins with seven more points gave the Kings a 97-77 advantage early in the fourth quarter. That was moments before Barnes decked Kilpatrick and brought out some fight in the Nets, but they couldn't sustain it.
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