 Sacramento's Doug Christie tries to get in the way of Denver's Nick Van Exel. William R. Sallaz NBAE/Getty Images 56k | 300k |
Turkoglu was just as effective as the first player off the bench. The Turkish native connected on 6-of-9 shots and helped the Kings put together a 15-4 run that opened a 56-45 lead at halftime.
"Coach told me the other day when coming off the bench I have to be aggressive on defense and offense," Turkoglu said. "I think today I did a little better. If I play every day hard, I think that I'm going to improve myself much better than last year."
Turkoglu made two free throws to start the surge and scored eight in the run. The Kings hit 10-of-12 foul shots in that span and 27-of-40 in the game.
Stojakovic and Turkoglu combined with Vlade Divac for 55 points as the Kings shot 47 percent (37-of-78).
The win was Sacramento's first at the Pepsi Center. The Kings had lost their first four visits here.
The Kings are without the services of All-Star forward Chris Webber due to an ankle sprain suffered in preseason. But the trio of Europeans have performed well in his absence so far.
"We all have to be more responsible," Stojakovic said. "My main concern in the beginning when he got hurt was defensive boards and defense. So far we are doing a good job of not leaking out lazy buckets."
"I was pleased with the way we played," Sacramento coach Rick Adelman said. "After the first quarter, we controlled the tempo. We made them guard us and got better defensively as the game wore on. We have a lot of good passers and shooters. We believe we can without Webber, but we have to have guys step up every night."
After Scott Williams' layup with 7:29 left in the second quarter, the Nuggets missed 12 of their next 14 shots to close out the half.
Nuggets coach Dan Issel was ejected as his team was falling out of the game. With 2:12 left in the half, George McCloud became entangled with Kings center Vlade Divac going for a rebound and Issel got in the face of referee Joe Forte.
Denver was paced by Nick Van Exel, who had 32 points on 12-of-25 shooting. The Nuggets shot just 37 percent (33-of-89) overall.
"Our biggest problem tonight was we just couldn't shoot the basketball," Issel said. "We also didn't get back on defense and didn't rebound."
As good as Van Exel has been so far, he was not a factor in the decisive second quarter. He has scored 71 points in Denver's last two games but was only 1-of-8 in the decisive period.
"In the big situations we gave up a lot of offensive rebounds," Van Exel said. "Our strategy was kind of backfired to double off of (Kings guard Doug) Christie. He made a lot of tough shots tonight. I could tell they were focused tonight. They played tough on both ends of the court."
Doug Christie struggled through the first half but made several key baskets in the third quarter to finish with 15 points on 5-of-10 shooting.
"I want to set a tone early to be aggressive and get others involved more," Van Exel added. "We've got to find ways to get our teammates going, especially Raef (LaFrentz). We're not going to win without the big guy."