Kings vs Celtics Preview: A Long Way from Fenway

The Kings don’t have time to ponder what could have, should have been in the last few minutes of Wednesday’s game against the Bucks. A Celtic steamroller has found it’s way to the G1C. For anyone who has tuned out the Eastern Conference in 2022, just resigned to the fact that the East was having a resurgent year… I might start paying attention, starting tonight because the Celtics… the Celtics aren’t just talented or good… they’re straight-up championship contenders.

I’ll add some context to the run the Celtics are on right now and put it this way: if some Celtics variant of Will decide to start an Operation: S.T.E.V.E.N.S. three days sooner than I had in the last week of January, Celtics fans would have had a grand total of four chances to donate to their fine local charities and non-profits. We’ve had FIFTEEN. Since that random arbitrary January 23rd date I picked, the Celtics have amassed a record of nineteen wins, four losses – the Kings have lost four games in a row THREE times in that same span. The Celtics are healthy, they’re locked in on the defensive end, and they feature two supreme scorers in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. They’re looking good enough right now that tonight feels like it could be a good night to punt it, sneaky tank and sit a dinged-up Fox too… and that’s before considering that Marcus Smart’s last game ended with him putting Steph Curry on the sidelines for the foreseeable future.

Hey, anyone else find it ironic that a struggling Kings squad would play the Celtics the week after Daylight Savings Time starts? On account of, ya know, we’re still looking for our Auerbach.

Let’s talk Kings basketball!

When: Friday, March 18th, 7:00 PM PT

Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA

TV: NBCSCA – Mark Jones (play-by-play)

Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM

For Your Consideration

Nik Rocks or Kick Rocks? : Yeah, before we go even a toe’s depth into this preview, we’re going to acknowledge that Nik Stauskas is currently on the Celtics and even played 2:36 in the previous game, taking and making his only three point attempt. Rain drop, drop top, Nik Stauskas clinging to his last stop. In all seriousness, I think Nik probably gets more shit than he deserves – he did himself no favors by rubbing the Kings misfortune in fan’s faces on Twitter after Sacramento evacuated him to Philly and that ill fated pick swap Divac agreed to wound up happening two years later. It wasn’t his fault that Vlade thought he was pulling the backyard basketball equivalent to Usher finding a young Justin Bieber on YouTube. The artist formerly known as Sauce Castillo isn’t a good NBA player, but seeing as how there’s a game tonight that he might find minutes in, I’ll lightly advocate for him not hearing anything when his name is called rather than boos because well, he deserves to be forgotten by this fanbase. For all you hard hearted fans that haven’t forgotten, remember: it’s harder to know you’re irrelevant than it is to know you’re a villain.

Hey, speaking of that pick swap: the Kings landed #3 that year, Philly flipped it for the #1 overall and botched it with selecting Markelle Fultz. Say the Kings had kept #3, do you really believe Vlade when he said he’d have still drafted Fox, even OVER Jayson Tatum? Obviously Tatum has transformed into a fantastic scorer in this league and at the time there was real doubts about his speed and his defensive versatility… but I often wonder if Vlade would have played that game of chicken and selected Fox over him and how we’d all feel about it today if he had. Anyways, enough rehashing old wounds. On to the game tonight.

The last time the Kings played the Celtics, they lost by FIFTY THREE points. Yeah, yep, it was that goddamn game. It was a game so horrid, so vile, so intensely revolting that it caused me to consider never writing another preview again. It was literally that night that I originally wrote up my Operation:M.C.N.A.I.R. rant for the preview of the Hawks game the very next day. Sacramento charities are thousands of dollars more flush with cash (more on that later) because of the absolute thrashing they gave to the Kings. I’m not going to thank them, but seeing how far we’ve come in that department… I’m a few hundred dollars lighter because of them.

The Kings will be without the top scorer, the third, fourth and fifth top scorers in that game tonight. Which, if I’m not being intentionally alarmist, isn’t saying much. Buddy Hield led all Kings in scoring that night with… 11. Haliburton and Terrence Davis both had seven, Marvin Bagley tied three other players (Ramsey and King, who are also both gone, and Queta who’s on G-League assignment) with six. If you’re wondering about some of the big time guys and how they fared in that game? Well, Fox didn’t play and Harrison Barnes shot 1-12, playing a team high 29:48 and scoring the team’s second lowest total of 4 points. IT WASN’T A FUN GAME.

On the reverse side, Jayson Tatum scored 36 points, Jaylen Brown scored 30 points in less than 24 minutes, Robert Williams had a plus-minus of +42(!) and Marcus Smart had a plus-minus of +36 without scoring a single point in 23 minutes. IT WASN’T A FUN GAME.

Tonight should be different, he said as a jinx slow yanked itself into the fabric of our universe and skittered across space-time for a date with destiny. Even in the case of De’Aaron Fox being injured yet again for a match-up with Boston, the Kings have a low-post presence that is world’s better than anything the Kings could throw at them last time around. Most of the pieces that failed at the end of January have been taken out behind the woodshed and dumped. We have new guys to disappoint the hell out of us! And oh, all the many ways they can.

Boston’s calling card this season, something that has truly turned on of late is their defense, rated #1 in the NBA. They allow opponents to score 103.7 a contest, best for 2nd in the league, block the 2nd most shots while fouling the 5th least and hold opponents to the worst field goal percentage in the league from both behind and inside the arc. They’re in the bottom third in the league in steals, but get their extra opportunities by rebounding the shit out of the basketball – third in the NBA in overall rebound, by way of 10th in offensive and 5th in defensive boards.  They’re a brick wall. They’re a buzz saw. They’re a brick wall outfitted with rows of buzz saws.

On the offensive end, they’re fairly pedestrian and yet, when you’re a pedestrian astride a suddenly and inexplicably moving buzzsaw covered brick wall, things move out of the way for you. They 16th in the league in scoring at 109.5 per contest, shoot the 10th most three’s at the 23rd best percentage and take the 20th most two pointers at the 14th best rate. They’re 16th in assists, bottom ten in free throw attempts but Top 3 in terms of percentage and 13th in the league in turnovers. They get by on the broad shoulders of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown carrying the scoring load and everyone else chipping in where they can, when they can.

This might be a little hot-takey but I truly don’t think the Celtics should be a dark horse contender discussion anymore. I think they should be in that level of plain ol’ contender discussion. Below Phoenix and maaaybe below Milwaukee, but they’ve turned a corner and I’d take them above Miami, Chicago, Philly and easily above Brooklyn at this point out East.

[Special shout-out my sister and her boyfriend David, who are both attending their first Kings game tonight. David’s come all the way from Scotland to see one of the premiere historical NBA teams play… and the Celtics too, of course.]

Operation M.C.N.A.I.R. Update

Haven’t done one of these in awhile thanks to the untimely death of my desktop and it’s about time I lay down some numbers before the home stretch of games to close out this season. So after spending today putting in the last few games worth of donations, Kings fans have donated $8765.15 in just fifteen games this season on behalf on Operation:M.C.N.A.I.R…. I started this fully as a way to release some pent up frustration and make something positive out of a negative, assuming a charity or two would get a boost of 10, 20 bucks a night because I’m a bit of a cheeky prick. To be on track to have donated around $10,000 by the time this season is all said and done is a remarkable achievement for this fanbase, and I couldn’t be prouder of us all.

To all those who have spent time amplifying this on social media or with their friends, who have spent their hard earned money on something with an origin as silly as this – you should know you have my deepest thanks and a gratitude that will extend long past this season. I’ll be at the Arco Farewell Party on Saturday in Sacramento… please feel free to find me and redeem a lifetime of handshakes, hugs, fist bumps  if you’re in the area. I promise I’m even weirder in person, but I don’t bite.

[Editor’s note: Kings Herald cannot promise that Will won’t bite you.]

This team is a hard team to root for at times and this world, a hard place to live in… it’s getting harder all the time. But, we’ve spun shit into gold for tens of very thankful charities and brought some people in need the hope and love they deserve from their community.

If you haven’t jumped in yet, we still have at least six or seven charities to go – I’d love to hear from you here, or in the recap or in the donation’s email like I’ve seen from so many of you.  If not, that’s fine too. You just being here, continuing to read my rants kept me going long enough to have this silly idea and for the Sacramento Kings fanbase to get behind it, change it into a force for good and make our world a bit brighter. That alone is worth a lifetime of my praise and thanks.

Prediction

Boston gets swept in the first round and my annual “feels like an idiot for believing” cloud starts sprinkling until the draft lottery a few months later when it starts POURING.

Kings: 111, Boston: 107