What: Charlotte Hornets (14-41) (5-21 away) at Sacramento Kings (28-28) (14-14 home)
When: 10:00pm Eastern
Where: Golden 1 Center; Sacramento, CA
How to watch: FanDuel Sports Network (now on Amazon Prime!), NBA League Pass
Outfitting: Hornets–Association (white), Kings–Classic (purple)
Injuries:
Hornets: Mark Williams-out (injury management), DaQuan Jeffries-out (knee), Josh Okogie-out (hamstring), Brandon Miller-out (wrist), Tre Mann-out (back), Grant Williams-out (knee)
Thoughts and prayers to anyone who was subjected to the Hornets’ game against the Blazers on Saturday night. With it being late on a Saturday, I can’t imagine too many people stuck around to watch the guys in the purple and teal lose by 53 points. It’s like they had a caffeine crash after a win over the Lakers and a competitive loss to the Nuggets. Just completely crashed and burned.
They’ll try to get back on track against a Kings team that has struggled to take the next step after ending their playoff drought a couple of years ago. They went as far to fire head coach Mike Brown earlier this season after he led them to their first two winning seasons since 2005-06. They’ve been better under interim head coach Doug Christie, but they’re still not world beaters by any means. To this point, they’ve been as average as average gets. They have a .500 record, .500 at home, .500 on the road, and Basketball Reference’s Simple Rating System has them rated a 0.0, which makes them bang average.
In attempt to get out of mediocrity, they acquired DeMar DeRozan from the perpetually mediocre Bulls. After De’Aaron Fox pushed for his departure, the Kings traded him away for a return that included Zach LaVine, also from the perpetually mediocre Bulls. Shockingly they’ve been mediocre in the seven games since LaVine’s arrival.
In those seven games, DeRozan and LaVine are leading the team in scoring while both averaging over 20 points per game. Domantas Sabonis is doing his usual thing grabbing every rebound while racking up his fair share of points and assists, Former Charlotte Hornet Malik Monk is having the best statistical season of his career as the team’s starting point guard.
The Hornets will need to refocus after they seemingly had a letdown against a weird Blazers team. They’re probably a bit road weary on this west coast road trip right after the all star break. They’ve got two games to go after this one, so they need to bear down and get through it.
