The first nine minutes of the Kings' Friday night game against the Atlanta Hawks at State Farm Arena looked like more of the same for Sacramento.
But after falling into ghastly 23-point hole early in the first quarter, the Kings scratched and clawed their way to an impressive 117-110 win over the Hawks.
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De'Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis, again, fueled the comeback victory, finishing with 31 and 25 points, respectively.
Along the way, Fox set a single-game career high with eight 3-pointers, three days after he made seven triples in a loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. The All-Star guard also added eight assists, six rebounds and four steals.
Fox's final 3-pointer gave the Kings their first lead of the night midway through the fourth quarter.
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Fox, who's now shooting a career-best 40.4 percent from 3-point range this season (88 of 213), was cooking against the Hawks, and at one point during the third quarter, he foreshadowed what was to come.
Sabonis came up three assists shy of his sixth triple-double of the season, finishing with seven dimes and 10 rebounds.
Trey Lyles led the bench unit with 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting from the field, including 4 of 9 from 3-point range.
"We buckled down defensively," Lyles told Morgan Ragan and Matt Barnes on "Kings Postgame Live" after the win. "The third quarter was huge for us. We went on a run offensively. We were playing together, and then defensively, we were covering for one another. We were doing our schemes the right way. We were rebounding and we were getting out and running, and that's what got us back in the game."
Coming off bad losses to the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Trail Blazers, the Kings appeared headed in that same direction when they trailed 31-8 less than nine minutes into the game. But they never gave up, and pushed their record to 18-12 this season with the big road win.