After a comfortable win against the Phoenix Suns, the Sacramento Kings are back in action tonight as they take on the team that defeated them on opening night, the Minnesota Timberwolves. It’s game one of the NBA Cup, so with a new court, renewed joy for winning basketball (and $500,000), and a new chance to hit a normal, normal number of threes, the Kings will still try to Wolves team to beat. looking to find their place and return to the top of the Western Conference.

Let’s talk Kings basketball.

When: Friday, November 15, 7:00 PM PST
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
TV: NBCSCA
Radio: Sactown Sports 1140am

For your consideration

Ant-Man vs. Kangz the Conquerors: Man, I have to 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 voice my concerns and they immediately come true against the KD-less, Beal-less Suns – I’m hitting 15 threes on 28 attempts, while the bench is playing decently without DeRozan and Monk. Taking only 28 threes strikes me as slightly crazy, but who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth. Let’s just say this game is a good one for shooters in Sacramento.

Speaking of being right, the Kings have a chance to get revenge tonight on their home opener with the T’Wolves in town. With the new Wolves still trying to put the pieces together, they sit middle of the road at 6-6, with three straight losses courtesy of the Heat and the Blazers (twice) and looking quite beatable. in their current state. This isn’t the time to pick on the Wolves just to take a lesson here: they have some real issues to start this season. First, 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 per game from last season, but it’s also a difference of more than 14% from the field. The man is dropping something heavy, and as such, and as a Kings fan, I’m extremely scared for the man who has nothing to lose. If anyone is ready for a breakout game, it’s Mike.

As a whole, the team looks very Kangz-ian in that they’re just not quite there. Adding and removing key cogs for the Kings has yielded both fruit and frustration, and the Wolves did so to an extreme degree And on the weekend before the start of training camp. It can be expected to some extent that it takes more than twelve games for a team to adjust, but with a return to the Western Conference Finals hoped for by some, and expected by others in the Wolves fandom, time is not a thing that the Wolves have. a lot of it. Julius Randle fills the KAT role nicely, within a point of KAT’s average from last year, while scoring a similar percentage, grabbing just over one less board, but handing out more of an assist. And yet, just the other side of the coin: Donte DiVincenzo was expected to be a strong 6MOTY candidate and he is averaging 9.4 points while shooting 7.1 attempts from deep to 30.6% from draws deeply. Rudy Gobert is a few points lower, Naz Reid is higher, the seesaw goes back and forth and over time it will stabilize. But it has not stabilized yet.

Whether they go up or down tonight is solely in the hands of Anthony Edwards. Cleaning up KAT, while a move primarily intended to save money, was also a sign for Anthony Edwards that his time had come. Expectations have risen to MVP levels for the 23-year-old. He is averaging less than 28 points per game, which is actually two points higher than last season. His game has evolved this season, taking nearly double the number of three-pointers and increasing his percentage from a respectable 35.7% on 6.7 attempts to a lethal 42.3% on 11.4 attempts. Doing so while maintaining a nearly identical overall field goal percentage is impressive. Did he go 0-9 in his last game against the Blazers? Certainly. Will he revert to the mean? Lord, I hope so. The Kings’ seventh-worst long ball defense must smell like blood in the snow for a wolf like Edwards, and without some excellent play from the Kings’ guards, Ant could inflict big, big pain on them. Nothing we don’t know yet, but I want to cover my bases in case a 50 citizen walks in.

Okay, quick fire observations for the talk around the water cooler 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 NBA pace, especially considering all summer, all training camp they wanted to be top-5 in pace and currently sit at, oh, 13th ? What else? Despite Gobert and Randle manning the middle, the Wolves rank 23rd in defensive rebounding and 25th overall, while the Kings rank 7th in defensive rebounding and 16th in rebounding overall. It feels indefensible with the Stifle Tower in it. Okay, I think that’s it for this game. Everyone is enjoying the new court going tonight.

The small stuff

Where it should be done: Yeah, sure, the game I decide to write about the Kings struggling deep and with production off the bench, the Kings go out and hit a normal amount of threes and the bench played well overall. I think my official prediction was that Trey Lyles hit 3-4 from deep and the guy hit 3-5… so I’ll take it. I need to see it longer than 22 minutes, but good lord it was nice that the guy shot at a decent clip. Doug McDermott, on the other hand, goes oh-fer…

Dubious handle: Listen, I know we have some young fans and they’re excited about the Kings and less excited about the Wolves. I’m begging you tonight, if you’re anything like the Kings fans sitting behind me and my Timberwolves best friend on opening night… Please find better talk than just shouting “Dubious Handle” every 25 seconds of the game . I can handle it if you shout, “That’s a bad shot!” and “he’s not a winning basketball player!” while going 8-10 from the field in the first half, including 4-5 from deep. I can handle you saying that a three-time All-Star, two-time All-NBA, Top 8 MVP vote-getter is just “no good at anything”… but for the love of all that is sacred about this sport, please find a better insult than “Dubious Handle”. We get it, it rhymes obliquely with Julius Randle. It’s really bad. It’s so bad.

Prediction

The game is tied with 0.7 seconds left and Julius Randle is on the line to put the Wolves in the driver’s seat. A lone bell slides out from the crowd and penetrates the hum of the fans into the shooter’s ears. It’s unnatural, it’s disturbing. Something deep within his soul bleeds, pierced by the inhuman cry that doesn’t seem to bother anyone else. It’s been going on for a few seconds, but it feels like hours, like years, like it’s always been there, deep in his DNA, ever since fish grew legs and walked out of the ocean looking for an escape from death. How long had he been on this line? On this earth. The sound vibrates him in ignorance. Sound. Don’t worry, he has another try. The ball returns to him, the routine is set, take a second, a second too long, as the noise of the crowd returns. It speaks. “duuuuuuuus“. His mind is blank: at once tense and completely smooth, a taser to his anterior cortex. The ball feels like a thousand pounds, his knees are like wet sand. Vision became blurred, ears ringing, his being screamed loudly to die and be done with this eternal torture. The ball goes up. “Swis”. The sound stops. He did it. Somehow, despite the pain of everything that happened before, he won the team the match. For the entirety of the next time out, all he can do is look at the breadth of his life, a new man, changed from the eternity of soul-twisting he had felt from the sound leaking from the edges of the arena, noise from a dark, numb universe . Havana syndrome? Rudy had sent him an InfoWars segment about it. Maybe he’d look it up when he got back to the hotel, or ask Rudy about it, or…

Keegan Murray blows Julius Randle off the stop for an open tip at the rim for the win.

Kings: 119, Timberwolves: 118