DeMarcus Cousins scores 40 as Kings hold off Jarrett Jack and Nets

So much for prosperity.

Things were lined up in the Nets' favor Friday night, providing the perfect scenario for them to piggyback their first win of the season with another and generate even more confidence heading into a matchup with the defending champion Warriors Saturday night.

They were squaring off against the Kings, who were so ripe with turmoil that they needed an organizational meeting earlier in the week to allow everyone to air out their frustrations -- eight games into their season.

The Kings also were without two key players in Rudy Gay and Darren Collison. But they still had DeMarcus Cousins -- and he was a force the Nets simply couldn't stop in the second half.

Cousins scored 30 of his 40 points in the final two quarters as the Kings beat the Nets, 111-109, at Sleep Train Arena.

"It was tough," said Jarrett Jack, who led the Nets with 21 points and 12 assists. "I thought that was a game we had control of for the majority and we weren't able to stop the run that they made in the second half."

Certainly not with Cousins bulldozing through some soft defense by the Nets (1-8). He connected on 12 of 17 shots after halftime and had 13 rebounds overall before fouling out with 43.6 seconds remaining. The enigmatic big man had his way with Brook Lopez, who had 17 points and 10 rebounds but went 5-for-15 from the field.

Cousins singlehandedly willed the Kings (3-7) back into the game during the third quarter, rattling off 19 straight points and totaling 21 in the quarter.

His driving dunk over Andrea Bargnani capped that stretch and his frenetic play propelled the Kings to an 85-82 advantage.

"He had a good first half, they made some runs in the second and Cousins played well," Lopez said. "I didn't do a great job on him in the second half and he got off. That's what I think definitely cost us. He was shooting the ball well, attacking. He played well and I didn't do a good enough job on him."

Cousins also benefited from Kings coach George Karl playing Quincy Acy at center for 15:13 in the second half, a move that allowed Cousins to shift to power forward and thwarted the Nets' pick-and-roll scheme, which had led to assists on 16 of their 24 field goals in the first half. The Nets had only eight assists on 26 second-half field goals and turned the ball over 12 times in the half after throwing it away only twice in the first half.

"Some adversity comes and there's some difficulty, you have to be mentally tough and buy in a hundred percent into it when things aren't going great," Nets coach Lionel Hollins said. "It's easy when things stop going well to start going back to trying to do it by yourself. And to be a good team, we've got to stick with it no matter what."

But they let another one slip out of their grasp, a maddening step on a three-game road trip that won't get any easier on Saturday night against the Warriors.

"That's definitely the toughest part, just being in the game and then come to the end and you are losing by one, two, three, four points," Thaddeus Young said. "But we will get over the hump and hopefully we can get better as a team, keep going to the drawing board and just keep working at it."