Well, what can I say. The trade deadline is gone, the favorite player of that kid in your office that owns the voice activated vape pen is gone, and any doubts that the Kings are planning for a playoff run… is gone. Over the last 48 hours we’ve said good bye to Iman Shumpert, Justin Jackson, Ben McLemore and Skal Labissiere and in their stead, Kings fans welcome Harrison Barnes, Alec Burks, Caleb Swanigan, Corey Brewer (on a 10 Day Contract) and a high school senior to be named (or traded) later. For the first time since Rudy Gay’s achilles injury way back in January of 2017, the Kings have a small forward and for the first time since your joints didn’t hurt randomly throughout the day, the Kings have a winning record in February and a wide open shot at an NBA playoff berth. To get there they’ll have to keep winning games; the Clippers hold the current 8th seed and the Lakers are hot on the Kings heels. Tonight the Kings face off against the Heat in what will presumably be Dwyane Wade’s final game against the Sacramento Kings, so if you see Sign Lady holding a new custom sign with Heat colors adorning it, she didn’t switch sides mid-game; she’s just being sweet, wholesome Sign Lady. Let’s talk Kings basketball!

When: Friday, February 8th, 7 PM PST

Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento CA

TV: NBCSCA

Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM

For Your Consideration

Gone Is The Flash: So some point this season you heard for the first time in close to a decade some variation of a sportscaster or pundit or blog boy whisper into the world: “I think the Kings are sneaky good”. It wasn’t said with confidence and probably had all sorts of qualifiers on the back end, once that person justifiably lost confidence in their take. You’ve had this happen to you this season, we all have. Well it’s going to happen again, maybe not at the water cooler today, maybe not Monday after a couple of post-trade deadline Kings but in the next few weeks you’re going to start hearing people around the water cooler lower their voice to say “…The Kings are a legit playoff team for the foreseeable future”. Again, qualifiers. “If they can make another move”, “If they can stay healthy”, “If some of those young guys become something special”… but the point is: with the moves that the Management made, with the cap situation and all other things taken into consideration, people are going to start having those conversations. With the acquisition of Harrison Barnes and Alec Burks the Kings aren’t a sneaky good team anymore. They’re a good team. They’re a Western Conference playoff team. None of this, “they could get lucky and sneak into the 8th seed”, the Kings are talented enough now to make a run to the playoffs because they have a team that is built for a playoff run. They’re simply good enough to do it, and that is, absolutely goddamn bananas.

If the Kings are going to start making that run, they’re going to have to gel quickly with the newcomers, get over the shock of seeing team mentors and fellow young guns get moved and start winning ball games. Only a single game out of the 8th seed and with the Clippers calling it a season, the race will come down to the Kings and the King himself, the Lebron James “led” Lakers “team”. (Somewhere in Marina Del Rey, a Lakers fan’s fist just slammed a dent into the Ikea desk his mom bought and built for him for his spring semester at Loyola Marymount and he’s looking for my Twitter page to ask if I’m “mad bro?”) The fight is almost assuredly between those two and those two alone; one team with the the greatest basketball player since Michael Jordan, and the other with LeBron James.

Tonight’s game, however, is against James’ old superteam mate, Dwyane Wade, and a Heat team that is always hovering between utter collapse and a short run to the sixth seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, with a GM and Coach too good to fail and a mix of talent too weird and expensive to truly succeed. Coming into Sacramento as the current seventh seed in the East and with a record of two wins below .500, the Heat are led in scoring by Josh Richardson with 17.3 points, and Goran Dragic with 15.3 points and 4.9 assists. Dragic won’t be playing in tonight’s contest after having knee surgery on a banged up right knee. So what is the make up of this Miami team, what do the rudimentary numbers that I can understand tell us about them? Well, for one, they aren’t that great at scoring the basketball, with the fifth lowest scoring average a game at just a smidge over 105 a game. They also run at the fifth slowest pace in the NBA, though that isn’t unexpected when your franchise star is 37 years old and was so prone to wiping out earlier in his career that they created an advertising campaign for his shoes around it. The Heat are the fourth worst shooting team from the field; middle of the league in three point percentage at 35%, and sixth worst from inside the arc at 50.1%. They’re one of only two teams in the league that shoot free throws at a worse clip than the Kings do at 69.1% and make the second least amount of free throws per game. On the flipside, They’re a pretty solid defensive team; teams average the third least amount of points against Miami at 105.6 a contest, they’re a top 8 team in not fouling guys and 11th in blocks. Again, they’re not… bad.

Tonight’s game is all about adjustment. It’s going to take a little time for Harrison Barnes to get acclimated to the Kings run and gun style. It’s going to take Alec Burks some time to figure out his place off the bench. Fox and Buddy are going to have to initiate and coach and find their spots to score all at the same time. The Heat aren’t a bad team, and with smart players like Wade and an intelligent coach staff captained by Erik Spoelstra, it isn’t out of place to say that the Heat could come in and take advantage of some of the chaos on the Kings roster right now.

Prediction

The Kings score 182 points on the back of 24 assists from De’Aaron Fox, 40+ for Buddy and Barnes and Dave Joerger weeps, for he has no more worlds to conquer. Dwyane Wade gives me a shout out in his postgame because he knows he was 15 year old me’s favorite basketball player. I wither into a pile of skin and die a happy man.

Kings 182, Heat 113