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Kings Close Road Trip With Impressive Team Win in Milwaukee, win 129 to 118

By Tony Xypteras
Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

The Sacramento Kings ended their 5-game eastern conference road trip with a 129 - 118 win over the Bucks in Milwaukee. I don’t want to say neither team played any defense, but the frantic offensive pace both teams played left little room for either defense to get in optimal position. It was an exciting, exhausting, much needed win considering how poor the Kings have played without DeMarcus Cousins this season (and every other season, for that matter).

The Kings played a near-perfect Boogie-less basketball game. Every single King that played tonight contributed positively to this win. ‘Team win’ is a cliché term players and coaches use to promote teamwork keep ego’s in check, but that is what we saw tonight in Milwaukee. I’m having a hard time deciding which players to single out, that’s how balanced this performance was. The Kings had 6 players in double figures, every King outside of Ben McLemore shot at least 50% from the field, free throws weren’t an issue, and the Kings only turned the ball over 8 times, which is even more impressive when you consider how fast both teams played offensively.

Rajon Rondo was outstanding. He’s been outstanding all season, but he is the most important King when Cousins is out. He can control, to an extent, the tunnel vision Rudy Gay tends to get when DeMarcus is out of the lineup. He can control the pace offensively. He can be the catalyst for increased ball movement. He did all of that tonight against the Bucks.

George Karl only used 8 players tonight, and the bench squad of Omri Casspi, Marco Belinelli, and Darren Collison combined for 54 points on 16-29 shooting. That’s just outstanding bench production.

Rudy Gay probably played the best Cousins-less game of his Sacramento career. 36 points on 13-21 is impressive on any night, but going up against Milwaukee’s length takes away one of Gay’s biggest advantages, and it just didn’t matter. It wasn’t empty production, either, as Gay made multiple tough, important buckets, none bigger than a three-pointer he was fouled on towards the end of the fourth quarter that essentially put the Bucks away for good.

It was nice to see another team meltdown at the end of a close game. We've been on the wrong end of that stick far too often over the last decade. Here is a pretty awesome clip of Jason Kidd getting ejected right before this one ended. I'm sure a hefty fine and / or suspension is coming his way.

I was about to close this recap with some sort of cheesy Happy Thanksgiving note, and then I checked twitter one last time to make sure I didn't miss anything postgame, and then, this ...

Good times! Kings win. Improve to 6-10 on the season. Turned what could have been a disastrous 1-4 road trip to a passable 2-3 road trip that could have been a 3-2 road trip. Things are / were / might be going in a positive direction, but now we have tunnel fights, so, stay tuned.

For the opponent's perspective, visit Brew Hoop.

UPDATE:

Not much to see here on the "tunnel fight".

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