Barnes Buzzer-Beater Stuns Cavs

If nothing else, Saturday’s contest in Sacramento has to go down as the weirdest, wildest ending of the season. Unfortunately, the Wine & Gold were at the wrong end of it.

When the smoke cleared on the game’s bizarre close, the Cavaliers had dropped their second decision to the Kings in the past six days – a 100-98 heartbreaker at the Golden 1 Center.

There were 11 lead-changes on the night, including three in the fourth quarter. All three came in the final 6.2 seconds.

After Lamar Stevens gave the Cavs a two-point lead, Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox scored on a driving layup and was fouled by Collin Sexton, hitting the free throw to give the Kings a one-point edge at the 6.2 mark.

On Cleveland’s next possession, Sexton took the in-bounds pass and went the length of the floor. His layup attempt was off target, but a review showed that Richaun Holmes swatted it off the backboard.

Goaltending was called, giving Cleveland the lead, but the officials also placed 1.6 back on the clock.

Without a timeout, the Kings went from the opposite baseline. Fox fired a baseball pass to Harrison Barnes, who waiting beyond the three-point arc, made the catch and drilled the game-winning turnaround 26-footer at the buzzer.

Barnes heroics spoiled Sexton’s comeback after missing the previous two games with a sore hamstring – as he led the Cavaliers with 26 points in the loss, going 11-of-24 from the floor, adding six boards, four assists and a pair of steals.

Darius Garland followed up with 18 points on 7-of-18 shooting, adding three boards, two assists and a pair of steals.

Larry Nance Jr. had another solid all-around floor game – filling in at the 5 with Jarrett Allen missing Saturday’s game with a concussion suffered on Friday in L.A. Nance led Cleveland with nine rebounds, adding 17 points on 6-of-12 shooting to go with a team-high five assists and two of the Cavs 11 steals.

Despite being on the second night of a back-to-back, J.B. Bickerstaff went with an eight-man rotation and it paid off.

Dean Wade was very good off the bench – finishing with 13 points and six boards, going 4-of-8 from the floor, including 2-of-5 from deep, adding two assists and a pair of steals. Damyean Dotson was rock-solid as well, going 4-of-5 from the floor for nine points to go with five boards and four assists. Lamar Stevens added six points, four boards and a steal – hitting both field goal attempts in 14 minutes of work.

Sacramento’s Fox led both teams with 36 points – his fourth straight game of 30-plus, a streak he began last week in Cleveland – going 15-of-24 from the floor, also leading both squads with six assists, adding two blocks and a steal.

Miss any of the action? Find all the highlights and photos in the Game Tracker.

Collin Sexton picks the pocket to get the steal, goes to the rack on the break, and dunks it home for a steal and slam in the fourth to add to Cleveland's lead.

It would be impossible to delineate a turning point before the game’s closing seconds on Saturday.

Neither team led by more than eight points – Cleveland’s advantage less than a minute into the fourth quarter – and there were 12 ties and the aforementioned 11 lead-changes.

More so than a turning point was a turning player – De’Aaron Fox, who got red-hot in the fourth, specifically after Cleveland opened that eight-point edge, canning three straight three-pointers to get the Kings back to within one.

From there, the fireworks ensued.

By the Numbers - 16.0, 11.0, 5.0 … scoring, rebounding and assist numbers that Larry Nance Jr. has averaged over his last three games – shooting an even 50 percent from the floor, including 50 percent from beyond the arc with a pair of double-doubles.

The Cavs steals leader (1.79spg) has five double-doubles on the year, three since the All-Star Break.

Collin Sexton, on what the Cavs can learn from Saturday night’s tough loss …

"We’ve got to close out games a lot better. We haven’t really been in that many tough, close games like that, so this is one that’s really going to stick out to us; we know we’ve got to get better (at closing) and pretty much learn from it. At the end of the day, we can’t hold our heads down, we have another one coming up on Monday. So we just have to be ready to go, watch film and pretty much lock in on the little mental mistakes because games like this – where it’s one or two seconds – that’s gonna come back down the line."

Enjoy the best broadcast calls of the night from Cavaliers Radio Network's Tim Alcorn and Rafa Hernandez-Brito from Power 89.1.

The Cavaliers close out their current four-game roadie on Monday night, but they won’t be home long when it’s done.

After taking on the Jazz on Monday night in Salt Lake City, the Wine & Gold return home for a Thursday night visit from the red-hot Sixers at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. From there, it’s three more on the road.

Next Saturday, it’s a trip to South Beach where the Cavs will try to snap a decade-long funk, followed by a stop in San Antonio the following Monday and wrapping up with a visit to Oklahoma City on April 8.