The Kings had a rough outing last night in New Orleans and to make matters worse have to travel to Minnesota today. Sacramento is once again resting several veterans, including Kosta Koufos, Tyreke Evans and Garrett Temple. Arron Afflalo, who has been away from the team for several games due to personal reasons, is back and will be available.

The Timberwolves are out of the playoff race, but they’re still playing hard. Ricky Rubio in particular is playing some of the best basketball of his career. In March alone, Rubio averaged 17.8 points on 47.2% from the field and 43.9% from three to go with 10.3 assists, 4.6 rebounds and 1.6 steals. On Thursday against the Lakers, he scored 33 points to go with 10 assists, 5 rebounds and 2 steals.

Karl-Anthony Towns and Andrew Wiggins are still the biggest threats though. Towns is having an even better year than his rookie season, averaging 24.7 points, 12.1 rebounds and 2.7 assists and he only turned 21 this year. Wiggins is also having a great year, scoring 23.1 points and increasing his 3P% to 35.5%.

The Wolves haven’t had the success they’ve hoped for this season under Tom Thibodeau, but they’ve been in a ton of games. In somewhat uncharacteristic fashion, Thibodeau has fashioned a top 10 offense from these young Wolves, but the defense has been bad, ranked 4th worst.

For the Kings to have a chance they will need someone to get hot scoring wise. The best chances of that come from Darren Collison, Ty Lawson or Buddy Hield. If Sacramento can get some outside shots to fall and play good defense, this should be a competitive game.

Tip-off’s at 5 p.m. Go Kings!