Pistons vs. Kings final score: Kings bench dominates, Pistons fall 109-104

Oy, it would have been nice to have gotten a bit of reconciliation from the Kings fourth quarter comeback two weeks ago. Unfortunately, Sacramento continues to have the Pistons’ number.

The Pistons jumped out to a nice double digit first quarter lead, but offense wasn’t scarce in the half. The two teams went to the locker room with the Kings up 65-62 at the half. Reggie Jackson came out playing well with 10 points and 7 assists in the opening half.

Detroit didn’t make life easy for DeMarcus Cousins, holding him to 8-21 shooting and 6 turnovers. But the Kings bench offered up 52 points to help carry his load. No seriously, I doubled checked, 52 points. Sheesh.

The Sacramento bench shot 20-36 from the field, led by Ty Lawson with 19 points on just 11 shots and six assists.

The Pistons got Kentavious Caldwell-Pope back from injury and were full strength once again. They had trouble defensively in the first half, but otherwise didn’t really play all that badly.

If you had to pinpoint the difference in the game, it was probably on the boards. The Kings took a 44-37 rebounding edge, which was critical in a game where neither team could really take much of an edge in getting stops. Cousins made his presence felt down the stretch, pulling a rebound away from Jon Leuer that might otherwise have kept the game alive and even taking the lousy end of a poor replay call where the refs attributed a tip to Cousins that was actually from Marcus Morris.

Detroit closed the gap to four points in the final minute, but a rather ridiculous jumper from Cousins sealed the deal.

The Pistons are off until Saturday when they’ll head to Miami, making this one of the most leisurely stretches of the schedule so far this season. Hopefully that can help them get back on track.

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