Deni Avdija scored 34 points on 11-of-13 shooting, and the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Sacramento Kings 120-107 on Friday night in NBA Cup play, opening a six-game road trip with their third straight win. Sacramento, meanwhile, has now lost five in a row and sits at 1-11, 0-7 at home, a number that looks more like a typo than a record this deep into November.
Two franchises are moving in entirely opposite directions right now, and this game was the clearest snapshot yet.
Portland Trail Blazers win streak: Avdija's breakout night
Avdija was close to flawless. Eleven of thirteen from the field, 3 of 5 from deep, and 9 of 9 from the free-throw line, a clean, efficient, no-waste kind of night that doesn't happen by accident. Damian Lillard added 29, still doing Damian Lillard things in his age-35 season, and Toumani Camara chipped in 14. Donovan Clingan, the rookie big man, posted 13 points and 11 rebounds, the kind of two-way line that tells you Portland's frontcourt is holding up its end.
The Trail Blazers are 9-3 now, and 6-1 on the road, with the only blemish coming against the Los Angeles Lakers in their NBA Cup opener. That's a real season, not a hot streak dressed up as one. Portland came into this league year as a team most people figured was still a year or two from relevance. Through 12 games, they're answering that question early, and Avdija, acquired to be a steady two-way wing, is starting to look like a legitimate scoring option on nights when the shots fall the way they did Friday.
Sacramento Kings losing streak hits five
De'Andre Hunter led Sacramento with 24 points, and Domantas Sabonis did what Domantas Sabonis does, 21 points and 12 rebounds, a double-double that's become close to automatic for him. None of it mattered. The Kings have now dropped five straight and sit winless at home, 0-7, through nearly a quarter of the season.
A 1-11 start for a roster with Sabonis, a healthy veteran scorer in Hunter, and real NBA talent up and down the roster is the kind of number that forces a franchise to ask hard questions, about fit, about health, about whether the locker room still believes the plan is working. The Kings aren't a tanking team by design. This is a team that expected to compete for a play-in spot, maybe more, and instead they're staring at a hole that gets harder to climb out of with every loss.
By the numbers
| Portland Trail Blazers | Sacramento Kings | |
|---|---|---|
| Record | 9-3 | 1-11 |
| Road/Home split | 6-1 road | 0-7 home |
| Current streak | Won 3 | Lost 5 |
| Leading scorer, Friday | Avdija, 34 pts | Hunter, 24 pts |
| Field goal efficiency, lead scorer | 11-13 (84.6%) | not specified |
The gap in that table isn't subtle. Portland is winning on the road at a rate most contenders would envy, while Sacramento can't find a win at home, where familiarity and crowd support are supposed to be an edge, not an obstacle.
NBA Cup context: what this game was actually for
This one counted in group play for the fourth annual Emirates NBA Cup, the in-season tournament that runs Friday nights through late November before building to the knockout rounds. The format has grown into a real stakes-raiser early in the year, teams scrap for group positioning the way they'd scrap for playoff seeding, and it gives these November games a sharper edge than a typical Tuesday in the regular season.
checked the almanac: a year ago, the New York Knicks became the first team to win both the NBA Cup and the NBA Finals in the same season, a sign of how seriously contenders have started treating this event. Portland's 6-1 road mark inside Cup play gives them a real shot at carrying momentum into that knockout stage. Sacramento, at 0-7 at home, is instead fighting just to keep group standings from becoming an afterthought.
What comes next
Portland takes its three-game winning streak into a back-to-back at Minnesota on Monday and Tuesday, the middle stretch of a six-game road trip that will tell us a lot more about whether this 9-3 start is real or front-loaded against softer competition. A road team playing on consecutive nights always faces a legitimate fatigue question, and how Avdija and Lillard hold up physically through that stretch matters more than the record they're carrying in.
Sacramento hosts Oklahoma City on Sunday, and that's about as tough a measuring stick as a five-game losing team could draw. The Thunder have been one of the league's best stories early this season, and a Kings team that hasn't won at home yet will need a complete performance, not just a Sabonis double-double, to snap the home skid against a team that good.
For Portland, the story right now is simple: a young core finding its footing earlier than expected, with a healthy Lillard still providing the scoring punch, and Avdija emerging as a real second option. For Sacramento, the story is a talented roster searching for answers before a bad start calcifies into a lost season. Both stories are still being written. Neither team controls how November ends, but Friday night moved them further apart than they were a week ago.