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The Phoenix Suns defeated the Sacramento Kings 103-88 in a preseason bout Monday night, and one of the things Suns' fans liked was the development of the fast break. Getting into those situations, of course, started with defense and rebounding via Bright Side's Jim Coughenour:
The Suns dominated the boards 58-46. That's plus-12. Go Suns. The four horsemen went for 40 all by themselves. What did grabbing all those missed shots by the Kings lead to?
Fast break points. Lots of them.
Marcin Gortat led the rebounding with 12, while Markieff Morris added 10 boards of his own. Luis Scola and Jermaine O'Neal contributed nine rebounds each.
It also helped that the Kings shot so poorly. Sacramento only connected on 37 percent of its field goals Monday night. Phoenix hit 44 percent of its own attempts, a number that would have been much worse had the easy buckets not been there.
Furthermore, Phoenix lost the turnover battle 22-16 due to a sloppy and sleepy start to the game. Coughenour was especially happy to see that the Suns corrected the poor start quickly.