{"id":253647,"date":"2026-04-06T03:59:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T03:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/253647\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T03:59:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T03:59:08","slug":"kawhi-leonard-and-clippers-beat-kings-move-into-a-tie-for-eighth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/253647\/","title":{"rendered":"Kawhi Leonard and Clippers beat Kings, move into a tie for eighth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Kawhi Leonard<\/a> scored 26 points, and the Clippers<\/a> snapped a two-game skid by beating the Sacramento Kings 138-109<\/a> on Sunday night to improve their play-in positioning.<\/p>\n

Leonard scored 13 points in the first quarter as the Clippers raced out to a double-digit lead and coasted against a Kings team playing out the string of a lost season. Leonard has scored 20 or more in 54 consecutive games.<\/p>\n

John Collins<\/a> added 25 points, and Darius Garland<\/a> and Kobe Sanders<\/a> each had 17 for the Clippers.<\/p>\n

The Clippers (40-38) moved into a tie with Portland for eighth place in the Western Conference with four games to play. The eighth-place team will have two shots to get into the playoffs through the play-in tournament.<\/p>\n

Devin Carter scored 21 points and Nique Clifford had 18 to lead Sacramento. Maxime Raynaud had 16 rebounds and 11 points for his 18th double-double, the most among rookies.<\/p>\n

The Kings, who won their previous two games, remained in a tie with Utah for the fourth-worst record in the NBA at 21-58 with three games left. Sacramento is tied for the third-most losses in franchise history, having lost 59 games in 1989-90 and 65 in 2008-09.<\/p>\n

Up next for the Clippers: vs. Dallas at Intuit Dome on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Kawhi Leonard scored 26 points, and the Clippers snapped a two-game skid by beating the Sacramento Kings 138-109…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253648,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[15998,6665,7010,112545,423,1953,664,59785,7008,112546,112544,1417,130,121,123,6707,122,16907],"class_list":{"0":"post-253647","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-clipper","9":"tag-clippers","10":"tag-devin-carter","11":"tag-eighth-place","12":"tag-game","13":"tag-kawhi-leonard","14":"tag-king","15":"tag-lost-season","16":"tag-nique-clifford","17":"tag-play-in-tournament","18":"tag-playoff-positioning","19":"tag-point","20":"tag-portland","21":"tag-sacramento","22":"tag-sacramento-headlines","23":"tag-sacramento-king","24":"tag-sacramento-news","25":"tag-tie"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253647","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253647\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}