After a comfortable win against the Phoenix Suns, the Sacramento Kings are back in action tonight and taking on the team that bested them on opening night, the Minnesota Timberwolves. It’s game one of the NBA Cup, so with a new court, newfound joy for winning basketball (and $500k) and new chance to hit a normal, regular ol’ amount of threes, the Kings will be looking to vanquish a Wolves squad still looking to catch their stride and return to the top of the Western Conference.
Let’s talk Kings basketball.
When: Friday, November 15th, 7:00 PM PST
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
TV: NBCSCA
Radio: Sactown Sports 1140 AM
For Your Consideration
Ant-Man vs. Kangz the Conquerors: Man, I’ve gotta say, the Kings worked quickly to make me look stupid after the preview for Wednesday’s game against the Suns. I finally get a chance to spill my concerns and immediately they come out hot against the KD-less, Beal-less Suns – hitting 15 threes on 28 attempts, all while the bench plays decent sans DeRozan and Monk. Only taking 28 threes is lightly crazy to me, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth. Here’s to that game being a get-right game for Sacramento shooters.
Speaking of getting right, the Kings have a chance to get even against their home opener spoilers tonight with the T’Wolves in town. With the new-look Wolves still trying to fit pieces together, they’re sitting directly smack in the middle of the road at 6-6, with three losses in a row courtesy of the Heat and the Blazers (twice) and looking rather beatable in their current state. This isn’t time to dog pile on the Wolves, only to educate here: they’ve got some real issues to start this season. For one, Mike Conley, especially on offense, has fallen off a cliff, averaging 7.4 points on 31.3% from the field with 4.7 assists and nearly a steal and a half to boot. Sure that’s only a drop of four points a game from last season, but it’s also a hair over 14% difference from the field. The guy is slumping something fierce, and as such, and, as a Kings fan, I fear greatly the man with the nothing to lose. If anyone is due for a breakout game, it’s Mike.
As a whole the team just looks very Kangz-ian, in that they’re just not quite there. Adding and removing important cogs to the Kings has born both fruit and frustration and the Wolves did that to an extreme measure and on the weekend before the start of training camp. It should be expected to some degree that it would take more than twelve or so games for a team to adjust, but with a Western Conference Finals return hoped for by some, expected by others in the Wolves fandom, time is not something the Wolves have much of. Julius Randle is filling into the KAT role nicely, within a point of KAT’s average last year while shooting a similar percentage, grabbing a little more than a board less, but dishing an assist more. And yet, only the other side of the coin, Donte DiVincenzo was expected to a strong 6MOTY candidate and he’s averaging 9.4 points while yanking 7.1 attempts from deep on 30.6% from deep. Rudy Gobert’s down a few points, Naz Reid is up, the seesaw goes back and it goes forth and in time it will stabilize. But it isn’t stabilized yet.
Whether they are up or down tonight is solely in the hands of Anthony Edwards. Clearing out KAT, though a move primarily to save money, was also a sign to Anthony Edwards that his time has come, expectations have risen to MVP levels for the 23 year old. He’s averaging a hair under 28 points a game, essentially two points higher than last season. His game has evolved this season – he’s taking nearly double the volume of three pointers and in doing so has upped his percentage, from a respectable 35.7% on 6.7 attempts, to a deadly 42.3% on 11.4 attempts. This while maintaining a nearly identical total field goal percentage, is impressive stuff. Now, did he go 0-9 his last game against the Blazers? Sure. Is he regressing to the mean? Lord I hope so. The Kings 7th worst long ball defense has got to smell like blood in the snow for a wolf like Edwards, and without a stellar outstanding game from the Kings guards, Ant could inflict some major, major pain on them. Nothing we don’t already know but I want to cover my bases in case a 50-burger is incoming.
Okay, rapid fire observations for talking around the watercooler today: Wolves are 8th in defensive rating, 6th in opponent points per game and the Kings are without DeRozan tonight. Maybe, the Kings can push the Wolves faster than their middle of the road, 16th in the NBA pace, especially considering the said all summer, all training camp that they wanted to be top-5 in pace and are currently at, oh, 13th? What else? Well, despite Gobert and Randle manning the middle, the Wolves are 23rd in defensive rebounding and 25th overall, with the Kings at 7th in defensive rebounding and 16th in rebounding overall. Feels indefensible with the Stifle Tower in there. Okay, I think that’s it for this game. Everyone enjoy the new court tonight that’s going.
The Small Stuff
Where It’s Due: Yes, of course, the game I decide to write about the Kings struggling from deep and with production off the bench, the Kings go out there and hit a normal amount of threes and the bench played well generally. I think my official prediction had Trey Lyles hitting 3-4 from deep and the guy went 3-5… so I will take it. Need to see it for more than 22 minutes, but good lord it was nice to the guy making shots at a decent clip. Doug McDermott going oh-fer on the other hand…
Dubious Handle: Listen, I know we’ve got some young fans out there and they’re enthusiastic about the Kings and less so about the Wolves. I beseech you tonight, if you’re anything like the Kings fans sitting behind me and my Timberwolves best frienemy on opening night… Please, find better smack talk than just yelling “Dubious Handle” every 25 seconds of the game. I can handle you yelling “that’s a bad shot!” and “he’s not a winning basketball player!” as he goes 8-10 from the field in the first half, including 4-5 from deep. I can handle you saying a three time All-Star, two time All-NBA, Top 8 MVP vote getter just “isn’t a good at anything”… but for the love of all that is holy about this sport, please, find a better insult than “Dubious Handle”. We get it, it slant rhymes with Julius Randle. It’s really bad. It’s so bad.
Prediction
The game is tied with .7 seconds to go and Julius Randle is at the line to put the Wolves in the driver’s seat. A lone shrill slides out from the crowd, piercing through the buzz of the fans and into the ears of the shooter. It’s unnatural, it’s unsettling. Something deep in his soul bleeds, pierced by the inhuman shriek that no one else seems to mind. It’s been going on for a few seconds, but it feels like hours, like years, like it has always been there, deep within his DNA, since fish grew legs and walked out the ocean in search of an escape from death. How long had he been standing on this line. On this earth. The sound vibrates him into unknowing. Clank. No worries, he has another attempt. The ball returns to him, the routine is set, take a second, a second too long as the noise from the crowd returns. It speaks. “duuuuubious“. His mind is blank: at once tense and totally smoothed, a taser to his front cortex. The ball feels a thousand pounds, his knees like wet sand. Vision blurred, ears ringing, his being screaming loudly to die and be done with this everlasting torture. The ball goes up. “Swish”. The sound stops. He did it. Somehow, through the anguish of all that has come before, he’s won the team the game. All through the next timeout, he can only look upon the breadth of his life, a new man, changed from the eternity of soul twisting he’d felt from the sound leaking from the edges of the arena noise out of a dark, unfeeling universe. Havana Syndrome? Rudy had sent him an InfoWars clip on it. Maybe he’d look it up when he got back to the hotel, or ask Rudy about it or –
Keegan Murray blows by a standstill Julius Randle for an open tip at the rim for the win.
Kings: 119, Timberwolves:118
