To punish those of us who felt good about seeing a Kings victory against a good team for once, the basketball gods decided Tuesday night that the Kings were going to lose at the hands of the team with the worst record in the Western Conference, and would do with the vets eating as many minutes as possible. Moe Harkless is playing decent? Screw it! 30 minutes for the man who couldn’t get off the bench in Miami! Harrison Barnes is still on the team? 40 MINUTES for that man! All the while, De’Aaron Fox played a season low in minutes (Walton says he’s got a tweaked ankle) and Tyrese Haliburton sat for good swathes of the game due to foul trouble and a bit of mismanagement. The game was high scoring, lots of threes and still, maybe the most boring close game of the year.
And now, we get to do it all over again tonight!
My personal friend and writer for Canis Hoopus, Leo Sun, makes his grand exit today, writing realistic views on all things related to this game. Oh, and there might be photos of me from college. Yikes.
When: Wednesday, April 21th, 7:00 PM PST
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
TV: NBCSCA – Kyle Draper on the call
Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM
For Your Consideration
I once heard that maturity isn’t so much about “adulting,” but about mentality. For example: Thinking about things in spectrums instead of binaries. It’s about never expecting the worst nor the best. Although I’ve been a “hardcore” Timberwolves fan for over 20 years (Damn), it’s been real hard to not always expect the former though. I know that you all understand that better than most, as a Kings fanbase. A little known fact about me was that I grew up in Vacaville as a big Sacramento Kings fan until I was peer pressured by my high school classmates in 2004 that “You can’t root for both the Wolves and the Kings!” during the fateful postseason in which MVP KG willed the Wolves to victory in 7 games. Sucker’s choice, eh?
It’s pretty much been darkness for us both since then: Unfulfilled promises. Relocation threats. Draft busts. Bad luck. You name it, we’ve both been there.
However as I’m now well into my 30s (Double damn) and I’ve learned to temper these thoughts. I’ve become more realistic. Things hardly work out the way we expect, for better or worse.
So what do I expect from the Timberwolves moving forward?
An exciting new ownership group, barring another Charlie Brown football moment by Glen Taylor, should truly mark the beginning of a new chapter in the upcoming years. Of course things could get worse, but at least they won’t be the same. Hopefully that means less Country Club retreads in the front office (Shoutout, Kevin McHale). No more illegal contract negotiations that waste away 5 years of 1st round draft picks. No more whacky “If you look me in the eyes and tell me you’re going to try harder, then I’ll give you a max contract” situations. With a GM in Gersson Rosas who appears to have already embraced a modern mentality of running a sports franchise, I expect to see slow, but marked improvement from the suits. Could we become Basketball 4.0? That’s possible too, but I’m not betting on it.
On the basketball court, things can easily go haywire, as demonstrated by the 2020-2021 Minnesota Timberwolves. However I find it unlikely that the Wolves will continue to have hilariously bad luck with injuries/suspensions/COVID that keep a Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Edwards core from developing into something special the next few seasons. I have my reservations of D’Angelo Russell and Malik Beasley being the other 2 core pieces, but have my confidence in Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid being awesome on big time discounts. Regardless, if this iteration of the Wolves can sustain the ~.400 winning percentage that they’ve been on pace since getting health(ier), then I think it’s entirely possible that Rosas is able to trim some chub off this roster to get us within a 5-7 playoff seed in a handful of years. Whether or not we overshoot or undershoot that goal will largely be based off 3 things:
- Development of Anthony Edwards: Will he have an *gulp* Andrew Wiggins (Or Willie Cauley-Stein, for reference) development curve, or will he ascend to a higher plane of basketball existence?
- Draft pick management: Will our 2021 draft pick go to the Golden State Deathstar with 59.9% odds, or will we win our hometown hero, Jalen Suggs, with 40.1% odds?
- Salary cap management: Aka will Rosas ride KAT-D’Lo to the very end, even if it proves to not work on the basketball court, or will he have the cajones to move on for bigger fish as they come available?
Those are my “realistic” expectations as a fellow basement dweller, but no one really knows what could happen. However I do know two things that will be certain moving forward: 1) Will and I will find ourselves on press row together by 2022 while texting each other side bets on whether or not the jumbotron will show Jack Cooley in the 1st or 2nd half of the game, 2) We’ll meet up post game at Broderick’s to talk about how wild it is that our best friendship has survived through a tyranny, a pandemic, and over a decade long.
Intramural championship ceremony, 2011
Kings opening night, 2015
Tonight’s Preview:
Don’t look now, but the mighty Timberwolves are now 29th in the NBA! This powerhouse is also just 2.5 games out from the dreaded 27th spot (4th in the lotto) so would tonight be the right time to load manage a few players? Why, of course not! Their next 2 games will be against the Jazz, who they somehow defeated in their second game of their season, so losing will not be a problem!
The Wolves did their damnest to blow the game last night, only to have been outdone by Lord Commander Walton. The Kings put on a shooting clinic in the 1st half (11 3PM on 21 attempts), but pooped away a 4-point lead heading into the final period. What happened? The backcourt of De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield, and Tyrese Haliburton went 1 for 8 in the 4th quarter while Karl-Anthony Towns posted 15/3/3 in just the final 7 minutes of the game (+10). How did the latter happen, you ask?
Walton trotted out a 6’8″-6’9″ tandem of Harrison Barnes & Moe Harkless to guard KAT. He waited until the lead ballooned to 7 before making any adjustments.
To make matters worth, we discovered that Fox is dealing with an injury, explaining a season-low in minutes. Gotta wonder if he’s going to be ready tonight.
Predictions
Leo
¢ Despite going cold to end the game, the Kings still shot an impressive 18/42 from three. Normally, I’d say that’s not sustainable, but against the Wolves… *ahem* “ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!!!!!!!” Buddy Hield, knowing Fox is ailing, breaks out for 30 points and my fantasy team thrives.
¢ Tyrese Haliburton get sick of Anthony Edwards stealing all the rookie shine. He goes full-on Reese’s Big Cup and channels his inner Fox, posting 26 points and 12 assists. Ant finishes with an inefficient 20 points while attempting 14 3PA (PLEASE STOP).
¢ We get round 2 of the extremely fun Chimezie Metu vs Naz Reid matchup. Blood will be spilled.
La métamorphose physique de Naz Reid, c'est quand même une dinguerie. Le gars était tout pataud, il est devenu ultra explosif. pic.twitter.com/zzFo2WcDMY
— Timberwolves France 🐺 (@TWolvesFr) April 21, 2021
¢ Kings fans get the true Timberwolves viewing experience, as Josh Okogie and Juancho Hernangomez combine for 0-7 shooting from perimeter. Oh wait, that just happened last game. Uh… they go 1-8 tonight?
¢ KAT continues to be unstoppable, but on the way to his 40th point, Hassan Whiteside shoves him to the ground. No one on the Wolves roster is really mean enough to jump in a fight, but Jarred Vanderbilt “accidentally” elbows Whiteside while attempting to offensive rebound a ball that’s sailing 5 feet out of bounds. Take that.
¢ Wolves edge the Kings out once again, 128-120.
Will
There’s absolutely no way I’m going to let a prediction where the Kings lose be the last thing in this preview, even if I have to force Moe Harkless into scoring 70 points tonight in my mind. Harrison Barnes plays another game of 37 minutes and averages the same 15 points 6 rebounds that it seems like he gets whether he’s in for 20 minutes or 40. Fox was saving his Super-Saiyan energy for the game he knows KAT will remember, and hoping to join forces in Sacramento someday, drops 50 and goes for a hammer dunk over KAT and at the last second lays it in. He’s merciful, for a price. Hali figures out the best defense he can play on Anthony Edwards is to give him a mic and ask him interesting questions. Edwards is a DNP-Now Sideline Reporter. He too thinks that you have to play basketball at a high level to really understand, you idiot fans!
Kings: 131, Wolves:127
[Special thanks again to Leo Sun for providing a ton of content these last three games. These two teams are miserable and they have been since in various forms since 2010 when I actively changed my college schedule to add a course where I could kick his ass in basketball every week and we ended up the best of friends. There’s been a lot of false starts and more than a few conversations on the couch over why we continue to root for our teams. I think the ramblings above are a good reason why continuing on was the right choice. We get to be a part of some amazing basketball communities and now we get to bother you a couple times a year with stuff like this.]
I just want to shout out HAPPY ANNIVERSARY KINGS HERALD!
https://twitter.com/thekingsherald/status/1252674138709217281
Crazy that it’s already been a year since the site launched, and it launched at a time when sports were not going on and everyone was locked down in their homes. I’m really glad to see the community and site continue to go strong, and I’ll always be amazed how this small, independent site has a great following, more so than the “site that shall not be named.” Thank you to the admins, writers, and staff for creating an awesome site for us to talk about a dysfunctional sports team!
Also, April 21, 2020 will be remembered as the day we overwhelmed your servers twice on opening day.
https://twitter.com/thekingsherald/status/1252675715830431744
For the entire life of The Kings Herald, the Kings have not been in the playoffs!
Congrats to TKH and its staff!
Honestly, it’s pretty nuts than we’ve been having the guests of honor blow spit all over the cake before we all dig in. From now on, you should have to extinguish birthday candles with your fingers.
We are likely to lose but at least we won’t be tanking or giving our young prospects any minutes or starting our ROY caliber player or giving our ROY caliber player 25 minutes or benching Buddy!
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Kings. Wolves.
Next.
How’s the outlook of the game looking for the Kings?
Two out of three ain’t bad.
(R.I.P. Jim Steinman)
TIMBER!
A fun look at an outsider’s perspective of the Kings vs. other teams trying to team build:
Ranking the Futures of the NBA's Worst Teams
Ranked 2 of 5 of the bottom teams in terms of brightest future.
One more time we face Towns and D-Lo;
Only chance is to stop them, we know.
If Peaches were here,
He’d be yelling, I fear,
Kings turnoverlook out below!
I appreciate another excellent preview, but I can’t help but wish that you would’ve just published the same one from yesterday, and then vehemently deny having done so.
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