The Sacramento Kings made their threes, played like a cohesive unit, and ran the Spurs off the floor on Friday. It was reminiscent of the Kings won over the Rockets earlier last week. Of course, the Kings followed up that Rockets win with a horrible shooting night and a blown opportunity in Memphis. The Kings haven’t strung together back to back wins in over a month. Can they buck that trend and begin to build some momentum by showing up for a should-win game against the Utah Jazz, or will the Kings continue their year of inconsistency?
Let’s talk Kings basketball.
When: Sunday, December 8th, 6:00 PM PST
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
TV: NBCSCA
Radio : Sactown Sports 1140 AM
For Your Consideration
And a one, and a two, and a three: It’s no coincidence that the Kings look amazing on nights the three ball is falling, and horrible on nights when it isn’t. The Kings are an offense built around DHO actions and movement to create open threes, or pick and roll actions with Malik Monk and Domantas Sabonis that can also result in kick out threes. We’ve heard endless talk about Mike Brown’s desire for more spray threes. We’ve written countless words this season on three point slumps that have held this team back from success. In wins this season the Kings average 38% from deep, in losses they average 30.4%. It’s the biggest and most obvious differences in their win/loss splits. Turnovers? Fouls? FT%? FTAs? 3PAs? None of those look much different in the splits. If the Kings make their threes at a reasonable rate, they’re probable going to win. Let’s see if the Kings can find the bottom of the net for more than a game in a row.
Time To Find Your Rhythm: The Sacramento Kings have a tremendous opportunity over their next 10 games to shift the narrative of their season if they can get into a rhythm. The Kings have the Jazz, the injury-decimated Pelicans, the severely struggling Nuggets, 3 games against the suddenly spiraling Lakers, as well as games against the Pacers, Pistons, and 76ers. We Kings fans know better than to count on wins against struggling teams, we’ve been burned before. But if ever there was a time to go on a run of 7 or 8 wins in 10 games, this would be a great opportunity for it. But it won’t happen by looking forward, Sacramento needs to focus on one game at a time. The Kings have proven themselves too unreliable to treat any of these games as a gimme.
Prediction
Regression to the mean cuts both ways, Keegan Murray and Kevin Huerter continue to break out of their shooting slumps, and the Kings roll.
Kings 124, Jazz 101