After a disappointing season opener against the Phoenix Suns, the Kings continue their 2025-26 campaign against the Utah Jazz tonight in Sacramento for their first home game of the year. Let’s get to it.
Who: Sacramento Kings (0-1) vs. Utah Jazz (1-0)
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
When: 7:00 PM PT, 10:00 PM ET
Watch: NBCSA, League Pass
The big story heading into tonight’s matchup revolves around who is and isn’t playing for the Beam Team. Domantas Sabonis has been upgraded to questionable, and if you heard him discuss his injury earlier today, it sure sounds like he’s playing. However Keegan Murray (thumb) and Nique Clifford (hamstring) are both out.
For the Jazz, they are mostly healthy minus Isaiah Collier (hamstring) and Georges Niang (foot).
Utah’s season opener might have been the most surprising result of the NBA season thus far. They destroyed the Clippers 129-108 behind their massive frontline: Lauri Markkanen had 20 points, and Walker Kessler chipped in with 22. This presents an interesting challenge for Doug Christie and the height- deficient Kings.
Clifford started game 1 for Christie against the much-smaller Suns. I’m expecting Sabonis to return, so that’ll take care of some of the size issues, but I’m very curious to see who starts next to him. Isaac Jones missed the Suns game due to an illness, but he’s off the injury report now. Maybe Christie goes a bit younger in that spot, and starts Jones for more size? Dario Saric and Maxime Reynaud are options, too, but I didn’t think either of them looked great against the Suns on Wednesday.
The topic of rotation conundrums brings me to my last point: Keon Ellis only played 13 minutes against the Suns, and that’s a problem. For reasons beyond my comprehension, this organization just doesn’t seem to value what he brings to the table, despite how often they preach it. He remains their best perimeter defender and most consistent shooter outside of Zach LaVine. For the second time, first Mike Brown, and now Doug Christie, Kings coaches claim they need to see better results on defense, beg for better effort defensively, and then bench one of the only guys that’ll bring it on that end every night.
Russell Westbrook, on the other hand, played nearly 19 minutes and shot 25% from the field. And yes, I’m being a bit unfair here – it’s not that Russ was bad. He was OK. But he should not be playing over Ellis, and what happened against the Suns was my biggest fear when the signing was announced. The Kings willingly made the guard logjam worse, and are now squeezing out the wrong players. Hopefully Doug figures this out quicker than Mike Brown, or he will likely suffer the same fate.
Yes, I will be writing about this all season until something changes.
Prediction: Kings 118, Jazz 109.