Kings’ ‘heated’ halftime talk inspires last-second win over Heat

Author:
NBC Sports Bay Area

Accountability can do wonders – and deliver last-second wins on the road, too, apparently.

Down 13 points, it was a “heated” halftime locker-room conversation that inspired the Kings’ 111-110 win over the Miami Heat on Monday night at Kaseya Center behind Domantas Sabonis’ one-handed putback after an offensive rebound with 0.7 seconds remaining.

“We knew we could play better,” Sabonis told NBC Sports California’s Kayte Christensen following the game. “Things got heated there in the locker room. We’re a better team than we are showing, and we came out that third quarter and made a big run.”

Outmuscled, outhustled and with several key players in foul trouble, coach Mike Brown needed a second-half response from his team, which earned a 3-1 finish to their multi-city road trip.

The Kings found inspiration and responded.

“Again, we challenge our guys, they challenge each other,” Brown told reporters. “And in instances like this, that’s what great teams do. Everybody wants to hold everybody accountable. I shouldn’t be the only one holding people accountable.

“Guys got to step up and say, ‘Hey, my bad. I gotta do better.’ Other guys have to step up and say, ‘Hey, you got to do better, you got to do better, you got to do better.’ But in order to do that, you all have to be playing at a high level; not scoring the ball or anything like that, but just in terms of your effort and your focus and your attention to detail.

“That’s what it was. It was just everybody holding each other accountable, nobody taking anything personal and all of us knowing, at the end of the day, we all had one common goal. That was to try and win the ball game, and that’s what we went out and did. Somehow. Someway.”

And as the stats show, the accountability that went around inside of Sacramento’s four walls revitalized the team’s exhausted and fractured spirit. Star guard De’Aaron Fox, for example, erupted out of the break.

Fox, who shot 0-for-11 from beyond the arc on Saturday in the overtime loss to the Toronto Raptors, delivered an emphatic 16-point third quarter.

Forward Keegan Murray admitted to reporters after the game that the Kings are at their best when an “aggressive” Fox – like the one from Monday – takes the floor.

“I mean he was aggressive all the time,” Murray said. “And when he’s aggressive, it’s when we’re at our best. We can go on big runs. He was the focal point of our run in the third quarter.”

On Monday, accountability did wonders, handing Sacramento its first win in Miami since Oct. 29, 2018. Brown and Co. took the beam to South Beach.

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