Kings hit All-Star break on low note with loss to Suns

The takeaway from the Kings’ 120-109 road loss to the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday was straightforward.

“The biggest thing that it should tell us is you can’t beat yourself,” head coach Mike Brown said after his team officially hit the All-Star break.

The Kings turned the ball over 17 times leading to 25 Phoenix points. The home team made 50 shots on the night while Sacramento hit just 37 with turnovers leading to extra possessions for the Suns.

Star guard Devin Booker scored 32 points while big man Deandre Ayton added 29 on 13-of-17 shooting. Point guard Chris Paul pulled the strings, particularly running pick-androlls with Ayton, dishing out a season-high 19 assists.

“You can’t have unforced turnovers against a good team like this on the road,” Brown said. “If there are 50-50 balls bouncing around on the ground, you got to want it more than them, and you gotta be the first one on the floor to get to it.”

De’Aaron Fox had his fourth consecutive 30-point performance and his sixth in seven games, recording a game-high 35, but he had five turnovers to his four assists. Fellow AllStar Domantas Sabonis had 24 points, 15 rebounds and seven assists, but he added four turnovers while Sacramento was minus-19 with him on the floor.

It was just the fifth time the Kings had 17 turnovers or more in 23 games since the calendar turned to 2023.

“I think we just had too many unforced errors,” Fox said. “Going up against a team like that, you can’t do that, just because they don’t make too many mistakes, and they capitalized off just about every error that we made today.”

Adding to the Kings’ issues was a lack of productivity from the bench against a Suns team that was shorthanded with three rotation players out due to injury and others sent out in the haul to land Kevin Durant ahead of the trade deadline earlier this month. Along with Durant, who was on the bench in street clothes at Footprint Center for the first time since the deal from Brooklyn, Phoenix was missing Cameron Payne and Landry Shamet.

Sacramento had just 15 points off the bench, with Terence Davis scoring 11 and Trey Lyles adding four.