The beam is lit! As of the writing of this column, the Sacramento Kings are on a five-game winning streak, their longest streak of the season. It has been a very good week to be a Sacramento Kings fan, and all I can say is that we needed this. It’s clear that the team needed this, too; I haven’t seen the players look as happy as they did at the end of Monday’s game against the Miami Heat at the Golden 1 Center.
After being down 17 with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter, the Kings dug deep and sent the game to overtime, not once, but twice. We had multiple exciting, game-tying moments before the second overtime, where it was DeMar DeRozan who hit nine shots in a row and solidified the win by putting the Kings up by five in the final seconds of the game. The smiles on those players’ faces actually brought a tear to my eye! And, the way they interact with interim Head Coach, Doug Christie is so good to see. I especially appreciated the hustle of shooting guard Keon Ellis, who has been starting while De’Aaron Fox is out after taking a hard fall against the Memphis Grizzlies last week. We hadn’t seen much of Ellis at the end of Mike Brown’s tenure, and it’s good to see him back. After the game, when asked about how important the crowd was in that fourth quarter, Ellis stated, “Huge huge, I think, honestly, we have the best fans. You go on the road, it doesn’t get as loud as it does here. And they’re sticking with us, they know we’re going on runs, they’re energizing us, we’re energizing ourselves, we’re just really feeding off them, it increases the morale for the team. The energy is good, the ball starts swinging more, guys start rotating and playing harder, so I think the crowd definitely has a big part to do with it.”
The Kings beat the Heat 123-118. Not to mention that four of these last five wins were at home, a place where the Kings have been underperforming. Oh, and I was so excited about the win against Miami that I almost forgot to mention the ass-whooping of the Golden State Warriors on Sunday, January 5th, where chants of “light the beam” made you wonder if we were in Sacramento rather than San Francisco; the Kings won that game by 30 points, 129-99. The Kings also won a very hard-fought victory against the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday, January 3rd, 138-133. I don’t want to forget to mention our boy, Domantas Sabonis, who leads the league in double-doubles for the third year in a row.
This week, the Kings will head out for a three-game road trip, first on Friday, January 10th, against last year’s champions, the Boston Celtics; next in Chicago against the Bulls on Sunday, January 12th; and finally in Milwaukee against the Bucks on Tuesday, January 14th. This will be a big test for the Kings, and I hope they show us they can keep it up. Maybe this time next week, that play-in tournament spot will be ours. Go Kings!