Kings vs. Raptors Preview: A Cold Day in (Basketball) Hell

The Kings are in Toronto, hoping to stop their slide at two games and man, have I had to write this kind of intro sentence way too many times already this season. Kings ain’t doing well, Raptors have won 3 of 4 even without imporant players like OG Anunoby.

Yada yada, blah blah. We’ve heard this before. We get the point here.

Let’s talk Kings basketball.

When: Monday, December 13th, 4:00 PM PT

Where: Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, ON

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

Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM

For Your Consideration

Kangz, Uh, Find A Way: The Kings are once again playing with any emotions this fanbase has left to toy with. After some decent victories over the Clippers and Magic last week, the Kings dipped back into that old familiar well of disappointment, losing against a depleted Hornets squad by way of two missed Fox free throws and then getting fully ambushed by a young and hungry Cleveland Cavaliers squad that hung 81 points in the first half and really never looked back. Sure we can point to silver linings like Alvin Gentry still having this team over .500 during his tenure as head coach and yes, the Kings did go on a run to cut it close in the fourth against the Cavs, but… is anyone buying it? Even if the Kings are the 10th seed at the end of this season are you really buying that this is team, or even more specifically, this core is the one that brings Sacramento back to prominence and respectability amongst their NBA peers?

I’m not nearly as grumpy this year because they’re playing to my expectations, they’re the same team as they’ve ever been. Bringing in an older rookie point guard with defensive acumen, hope the old vet you traded too much for gives a give press conference or two and then talk about “stacking days” during pre-season all you want, but… this jalopy is still more bondo and paint than anything else. You don’t need a degree from Princeton to see that this team isn’t a long term or short term solution for the franchise’s woes, just like it wasn’t back when Vlade Divac built it.

As the preview guy, the guy whose purpose is to get you to watch the game or at least take something interesting away from the match-up, I can tell you it gets repetitive as hell hedging your bets in both directions with this squad year after year. Could they catch lightning in a bottle, rip off a win streak and cruise to a 7th seed this year? Yeah, but the chances of that happening are, well, the same as catching lightning in a bottle. De’Aaron Fox is playing like he needs a change of scenery to wake up and the team, young guys and vets, are sagging right along with him. The coach is doing a fine job baby sitting and getting a decent amount of the team’s trade pieces to look a little better or at least not fully go off the rails. Monte McNair has no vagaries up his sleeves, only vagueness. I could give them credit in failure if they even tried to make things interesting. Pete D’Alessandro is hated in Sacramento but…the man attempted to do shit. So much so that he spun out of control and crashed his career right off the Tower Bridge.

But the Kings aren’t a car crash, they aren’t a sexy disaster that splashes across the nightly news. They’re the unchecked, irregular margins of a mole that’s grown too fast and too far to be stopped now. We aren’t watching history unfold in hideous manner, just someone we love, get worse and worse each year, with moments of who they were interspersed once in awhile, before wasting away in a hospital bed. While individual moments or even whole games have been fun, this team has zero redeemable qualities and at this point, they’re maybe the worst thing they can be in the entertainment industry: boring, to a point that it actively drains hope from it’s audience.

You’re getting this preview mere hours before the game, not because of a rainstorm or pressing matters, but because there’s nearly no motivation to write. I literally went and stood in line at the DMV this morning instead and the only reason I didn’t pass the preview off to someone else, was I was out in 20 minutes and had the time and pressure of loving the hell out of all of you to put something down.

Pray for the Kings, if you must, but pray for Greg too. He’s going to have to read 60 something more of these this season.

[Editor’s note: I mostly just skim these. Will uses a lot of words and its exhausting -Greg ]

Prediction

Kings do something interesting and someone will have a good game. People will ask “Where are the ____ haters at?” and that player will end up having the best years of their career elsewhere, some day sooner than we realize.

Kings: 115, Raptors: 111