Darius Acuff Jr. spent Monday night turning up in the possessions Sacramento needed most, then making the accounting complicated. He scored nine fourth-quarter points in several different ways and assisted three important baskets earlier in the game, helping the Kings beat the Dallas Mavericks 115-100 at American Airlines Center. He also committed five turnovers.
Sacramento got good work from him even as he gave the Mavericks several possessions they might have used to change the game.
Dallas had enough offense to make Sacramento work. Daniel Gafford scored 20 points on 9-of-10 shooting, grabbed seven rebounds and gave the Mavericks a dependable interior finisher. Walter Clayton Jr. scored 20, made four of five 3-pointers and produced 11 fourth-quarter points without a turnover. Morez Johnson Jr. went 5-for-5 for 13 points.
Dallas also made 29 free throws on 35 attempts, compared with Sacramento’s 10-of-15. The Mavericks scored 40 points in the paint to the Kings’ 38. Their perimeter shooting, however, tilted the game sharply the other way: Sacramento made 19 of 43 3-pointers, while Dallas made 7 of 33. The Kings’ 36-point advantage from beyond the arc outweighed Dallas’ 19-point edge at the line.
The turnover ledger did not offer Acuff a clean escape. Sacramento committed 20 total turnovers and Dallas turned those mistakes into 15 points. The Mavericks committed 16 turnovers, and the Kings scored 19 points from them. Acuff’s five giveaways were part of that vulnerability, especially in a game where Dallas kept finding ways to stay within reach.
That is why his fourth-quarter stretch was unusually valuable to Sacramento. Sacramento led 94-79 before Dallas cut the margin to seven on two Clayton 3-pointers and a Johnson dunk. Acuff answered with two free throws.
Malik Monk followed with a 3-pointer, and Acuff then scored on a 9-foot driving floater. Those were separate scoring contributions in a response that kept Dallas from turning its burst into a full reset.
Acuff returned to the scoring column with a driving layup and later made a 3-pointer, taking Sacramento to a 106-91 lead. The nine points were not nine unanswered points, and they did not arrive in one uninterrupted assault. They were spread across a fourth quarter in which Dallas kept trying to narrow the gap and Sacramento kept producing enough offense to make the chase costly.
The earlier assists were just as important to the shape of the game. In the third quarter, Acuff fed Malik Monk for a running dunk, then assisted both of Leaky Black’s 3-pointers. Black’s first triple put Sacramento ahead 67-65 after Gafford’s and-one had given Dallas a 65-64 lead with 6:03 left in the period.
Before Black’s second 3-pointer made it 74-67, Acuff had scored on a 22-foot pull-up and a 15-foot driving floater, the latter assisted by Monk. The sequence moved through several contributors, but Acuff was involved in three of the defining connections.
