Cousins, Kings snap skid with impressive win over Spurs

The Sacramento Kings continue to emerge as one of the pleasantly surprising teams of the early NBA season.

The Kings snapped a three-game losing streak and improved to 6-4 on the year with an impressive 94-91 victory Saturday over the defending champion San Antonio Spurs.

DeMarcus Cousins continued his stellar play to start the season, posting 25 points, 10 rebounds and a block while playing some outstanding defense on Tim Duncan and mean mugging his way through the Spurs.

It was Sacramento's first home win over San Antonio in their last 12 tries and only their second win over the Spurs overall in their last 23 meetings. The Kings also became the first team in nearly two years to win a game without hitting a single three-pointer.

With Cousins playing at an MVP-caliber level, it's worth considering how dangerous the Kings can be in the incredibly tough Western Conference.

Ten games is a small sample size and surviving the West minefield over 82 contests is another matter all together, but the Kings have been a revelation while navigating through a tough early season schedule.

Eight of their first 10 games have come against teams that finished in the West's top-nine last season and six of 10 have been played away from Sacramento.

Coming out of that stretch 6-4 says something about a team, especially when one of those four losses was a controversial defeat at the buzzer in Memphis.

It won't get any easier, however, as the Kings will take on the Pelicans twice, the Bulls, Rockets, Spurs, Grizzlies and Raptors over the next two-and-a-half weeks, with a game in Minnesota the only clearly winnable game on the docket over their next eight.

If they can get through that upcoming stretch still hovering around or above .500, the Kings may then be able to do some damage as their schedule takes a turn for the better in December.