A thrilling duel with playoff flair – and a German international right in the middle of it. While Dennis Schröder had a quiet evening, the Sacramento Kings ran hot in the crucial final phase.
The Detroit Pistons got off to the better start and went into the break with a ten-point lead. But the third quarter clearly belonged to the visitors: the Sacramento Kings turned the game around with a 35:22 run to take a 97:94 lead into the final period. Zach LaVine put the seal on it with a pull-up three on the buzzer to secure the lead – the start of a personal run that threw Detroit off its stride.
LaVine opened the fourth quarter with nine points in a row to make it twelve points in a row – with nine minutes left on the clock, he had already scored 38 points, one night after his 37-point performance against the Cavaliers. In a wild back-and-forth, a shootout developed between Cade Cunningham (35 points, 13/21 FG) on the Pistons’ side and the Kings duo of LaVine and DeMar DeRozan, who shone with 37 points.
NBA: final sprint belongs to the Kings
With 2:30 minutes left on the clock, the Kings pulled ahead 121:112 – a lead that Detroit was unable to catch up on. Sacramento dominated the boards (50:37), led by the two Lithuanians Jonas Valanciunas and Domantas Sabonis, who together collected 27 rebounds. Sabonis also recorded a triple-double (19 points, 15 rebounds, 10 assists).
Dennis Schröder, on the other hand, stayed in the background: the German international scored five points, grabbed three rebounds and made two assists in 32 minutes, going 1/4 from the field. The Pistons remain in sixth place in the East and are now 1.5 games behind the Milwaukee Bucks. The Kings, on the other hand, are celebrating their third win in a row, consolidating ninth place in the West and thus retaining home advantage for the time being in a possible play-in duel against the Dallas Mavericks.
