Rookie Davion Mitchell scores career high; Domantas Sabonis injured in Kings’ loss to Suns
Davion Mitchell saw an opening with time winding down in the third quarter. He attacked the paint and took flight from the dotted line, going up aggressively against JaVale McGee, a 7-foot-tall, 270-pound center who is 60th in NBA history with 1,200 career blocked shots.
“I just seen a wide-open lane, and I knew if I tried to lay it up, he was going to block it,” Mitchell said. “I can dunk the ball, so I just tried to dunk it.”
McGee committed a foul to prevent what would have been a jaw-dropping highlight-reel dunk, but that didn’t stop Mitchell from having the best game of his career. The rookie point guard posted career highs of 28 points and nine assists in a 127-124 overtime loss to the Phoenix Suns on Sunday at Golden 1 Center.
Mitchell made his ninth start of the season in place of De’Aaron Fox, who has missed the past two games due to right hand soreness. Mitchell went 9 of 22 from the field, but he made 4 of 7 from 3-point range and converted all six of his free-throw attempts.
“De’Aaron does a lot of our scoring and facilitating, so I knew I had to pick up the pace,” Mitchell said.
Devin Booker had 31 points, seven rebounds and five assists for the Suns (58-14), who lead the Western Conference by nine games after winning five in a row and 17 of their last 21. Mikal Bridges scored 27 points. Landry Shamet came off the bench to score 21.
Harrison Barnes added 21 points for the Kings (25-48), who have lost three in a row and seven of their last eight. Domantas Sabonis had 18 points, 12 rebounds and six assists before going down with an injury to his left knee with 5:02 to play in the fourth quarter.
Interim Kings coach Alvin Gentry said Sabonis would undergo a magnetic resonance imaging exam to determine the extent of the injury.
“We won’t know anything until he gets an MRI, which will happen tomorrow … or maybe even this afternoon,” Gentry said. “I haven’t talked to the doctors yet. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
Gentry said it was encouraging to see Mitchell rise to the occasion with big plays to keep his team in the game against the top team in the NBA.
“It’s good and it’s hard for him in this situation because we’re playing him 46 minutes and we’re asking him to guard Booker and then we’re asking him to guard Shamet, and then we’re asking him to come down and put us in our offense,” Gentry said. “That’s really hard for a guy who has now played over 70 games, and that would be two colleges seasons.”
The Kings were up 26-22 at the end of the first quarter and carried a 59-49 lead into the halftime break after making 11 of 17 from 3-point range in the opening half. They took their largest lead of the game when Sabonis converted a three-point play to put Sacramento up 65-51 early in the third quarter, but that’s when Booker started cooking.
Booker scored 17 points in the third period before going to the bench with his fifth foul. The Suns staged a 15-3 run to cut the deficit to one and took their first lead of the game when Shamet converted a four-point play to put Phoenix up 89-87 early in the fourth.
The teams traded leads the rest of the game. Booker, Deandre Ayton and McGee all fouled out in a hard-fought, physical game, but the Suns escaped with the win after Shamet hit a 3-pointer with 31.1 seconds to play in overtime.
Mitchell was asked about the fight his team has shown recently despite being all but mathematically eliminated from playoff contention.
“It just shows the identity we’ve got to have every game,” Mitchell said. “That’s just kind of got to be our culture of being a hardnosed team that fights to the end and battles no matter what.”
