Kings 107, Rockets 97
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Center DeMarcus Cousins scored 26 points and grabbed 11 rebounds, and point guard Darren Collison made up for the absence of teammate Rajon Rondo with 14 points and 13 assists, as the Sacramento Kings ended a string of misery against the Houston Rockets with a 107-97 victory at Sleep Train Arena on Tuesday.
Collison started for only the third time all season and played 41 minutes after Rondo was suspended for one game for hurling gay slurs at referee Bill Kennedy during a game against Boston in Mexico City on Dec. 3.
Rondo, the NBA's leader in assists with 11.0 per game, had started Sacramento's first 24 games and was averaging 35.5 minutes per game.
Without him, Collison produced four assists in the game's first three minutes and six in the first 12. His 13 assists were his most this season and helped Sacramento win for the first time in nine games against Houston.
It was just the Kings' fifth win in 21 games against the Rockets since April 12, 2010.
Forward Omri Casspi scored 19 points and added six assists and the Kings won their third straight to match the longest win streak of the season.
Casspi has scored in double figures in nine straight games, the longest of his career.
Kings forward Rudy Gay added 17 points and 13 rebounds, and threw down a dunk off a 4-on-1 break with less than two minutes left that sealed the contest.
Guard James Harden scored 33 points to pace the Rockets (12-14), who have lost the opening two games of a three-game road trip. Harden has scored at least 30 points in his past six visits to Sacramento.
Guards Jason Terry and Patrick Beverly each scored 14 points for the Rockets.
As expected, both teams got up and down the court, and the pace was frenetic. The Kings, the third-highest scoring team in the league sprinted to an 11-2 lead in the first quarter, and put together a 13-2 run late in the first half against the NBA's fourth-worst defense.
The Rockets, the NBA's third-ranked offense, used their own 13-2 run to erase that first-quarter deficit, and scored 19 points in the final 6 1/2 minutes of the third quarter against the league's second-worst defense to reduce a 15-point deficit to 82-74 entering the final period.
NOTES: Kings G Rajon Rondo issued another apology to referee Bill Kennedy for hurling gay slurs toward him after being ejected from a game against Boston on Dec. 3. "I want to be clear, from the bottom of my heart, that I am truly sorry for what I said to Bill," Rondo said in a statement posted on the team's website Tuesday, a day after he addressed the suspension in questionable fashion on Twitter. "This is no place on or off the court for language that disrespects anyone's sexual orientation. This is not who I am or what I believe, and I will strive every day to be a better. person." ... Rockets F Dwight Howard, the subject of trade rumors circulating on the Internet and social media, has played in both games of back-to-back contests three of the past four times Houston has had them. ... The Kings' run of using the same lineup ended at a season-high four straight games because of Rondo's suspension. They've used 13 starting lineups in 25 games. ... G James Harden averaged 43.7 points in his three previous trips to Sacramento and 34.3 in his first six contests there as a Rocket.