Sacramento Kings rout Boston Celtics to claim NBA Summer League title
Louis King's 21-point, five-steal championship game capped a perfect 5-0 Las Vegas run and made Sacramento the first franchise to win the tournament twice under its current format.
The Sacramento Kings routed the Boston Celtics 100-67 in Las Vegas on August 17, 2021 to win the NBA Summer League championship, finishing the tournament with a perfect 5-0 record, according to CBS Sports and ESPN's game reporting. Louis King was named championship game MVP after scoring 21 points with five steals.
CBS Sports reported the win marked Sacramento's second Summer League title, with its first coming in 2014, making the Kings the first franchise to win multiple championships under the tournament format that began in 2013. ESPN's box score showed Sacramento pulling away in the second half, outscoring Boston 56-31 across the third and fourth quarters after a 44-36 halftime edge.
What the reporting reviewed here does not include is any postgame quote from King, Sacramento's coaching staff, or the Celtics about the result — both CBS Sports' and ESPN's accounts are limited to box-score and season-summary detail rather than locker-room reaction.
What changed: an undrafted two-way signee became the tournament's best player
King, an undrafted 2019 Oregon product who had spent two seasons in the G League before signing a two-way contract with Sacramento in May 2021, led the Kings' title-game effort. NBC Sports' coverage credited his offense alongside ninth overall pick Davion Mitchell's defense as the two-man engine of the run, with Mitchell holding Boston's Payton Pritchard — who had averaged 20.3 points per game in Las Vegas coming into the final — to six points on 0-of-6 shooting from three-point range.
The framing: depth across the roster, not a one-man show
Beyond King and Mitchell, CBS Sports' recap credited Robert Woodard with a 14.4 points-per-game average across the tournament and Jahmi'us Ramsey with 16.2, while Matt Coleman III added 14 points in the championship game itself. CBS Sports also noted a family milestone tied to the win: bench contributor Alex Antetokounmpo's championship meant all four basketball-playing Antetokounmpo brothers had won a title within a 280-day span, following Kostas' 2020 Lakers championship and Thanasis and Giannis' 2021 Bucks title.
What it signals: Summer League form as an early roster signal, not a guarantee
A dominant, undefeated Summer League run built around a two-way player and a lottery rookie is the kind of result franchises point to as evidence their young core is ahead of schedule, but the sources reviewed here stop at the tournament result itself and do not report on how King's or Mitchell's Summer League performances translated into their regular-season roles that followed.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by CBS Sports, ESPN and NBC Sports. It restores a story originally published on this site in August 2021; figures are as reported at the time.