Mazzulla believes Kings are a ‘revived’ team amid six-game win streak

Mazzulla believes Kings are a ‘revived’ team amid six-game win streak originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

What is it called when a team responds to a five-game skid, a coaching change and goes on to win six in a row, including a big win against the reigning NBA champions?

Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla summed it up perfectly.

“Sacramento’s a revived team,” Mazzulla told reporters after the Kings’ 114-97 win over his Celtics on Friday night at TD Garden. “They won six in a row now. They’re a good team — they just outplayed us. I don’t have an answer as far as that stuff, but tonight they just played better than we did.”

The Kings had three days off to recover from their double-overtime win against the Miami Heat on Monday night at Golden 1 Center before packing their bags for a short three-game road trip.

Regardless of the rest, the first stop of the road trip was no easy atmosphere.

Defending champs. A hostile environment like TD Garden. Not to mention Boston also was well rested with two days off.

That’s why Celtics star Jayson Tatum won’t point the finger at anything or anyone but themselves for the loss.

“I don’t want to blame why we lost today on it being a trap game,” Tatum told reporters postgame (h/t CelticsCLNS). “Everybody plays 82 games. Everybody travels. Everybody plays back-to-backs. So I don’t want to use that as an excuse.

“[The] observation is we got to be better in all areas of the game.”

Boston (27-11) remains in second place in the Eastern Conference, only behind the historically dominant Cleveland Cavaliers. Meanwhile, Sacramento (19-19) holds the No. 9 seed in the stacked Western Conference.

Two weeks after the Kings fired former coach Mike Brown, Sacramento interim head coach Doug Christie and his “revived” squad have managed to turn things around as they aim to continue climbing the Western Conference standings.

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