Well… I’ll be damned. The Kings found a way prolong our collective anxiety by facing up to some wild odds in Portland and now, well, hope for that playoff spot stays alive for at least another 24 hours. But time is of the essence and Toronto demands their match and as such the Kings once again facing a game that could spell something quite dire for the believers in the Kings busting up their playoff drought in 2020. Not to be alarmist but Toronto is damn good, not for the East and certainly not for a team that lost a Hall of Famer last year, but just plain, old fashion good. They’re expertly crafted to be a team of players with no true transcendant star, but who all contribute to the beat down of everyone they run across and their eyes are set on the suddenly spry Sacramento team that has come walking through the doors of the G1C. I’m going to need some Pepto.

When: Saturday, March 8th, 6:00 PST

Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA

TV: NBCSCA

Radio: KHTK Sports 1140 AM

For Your Consideration

King of the Tyrant Lizards: I’m going to go ahead and straight up apologize if I don’t have much in the way of new stuff to say today. The fact remains that the Kings are on an improbable war path towards the playoffs after spotting the entire Western Conference two-thirds of the season and now every single game is pretty much a playoff game until the end of the season comes or the Kings lose, like, two games in a row… whichever comes first. Barring an unfortunate injury on the side of the Grizzlies or Richaun Holmes coming back as 2009’s Dwight Howard, the Kings are in a race against time, a race against math and a race against their own talent pool in both the front office and on the court. I’m here for the excitement, I’ve enjoyed being able to play with the idea of “this would be a total NBA thing to happen” but lord, it will make for repetitive reading. There are no boring subjects, only boring language and in this wild and wonky run I can certain feel that strain. So bear with me, Hemingway, I am not.

The Raptors tonight field one of the most well rounded teams in the league and operate in a blind spot of the league in which they’re ultimately one of the best teams on the planet and also entirely invisible to media. Losing Kawhi Leonard could have been a death blow to the Raptors and yet they’ve kept on trucking through the season like it was a minor inconvenience. There’s this video that makes the rounds every now and again on the web of a crab that stares down camera as it reaches one of its chela across its body towards the other, gripping it and then in one move, tearing it completely off of its body, never showing any sort of feeling about having just torn assunder half of the danger-pinchies from its goddamn body. This is the Raptors after losing Kawhi. He was ripped from them and they just … blinked and moved on. The Kings could have a guy like Fred Van Vleet leave their team in an off-season and I’m confident we’d have fans calling to blow it all up and start over and the Raptors are just cruising in second place like nothing ever really happened. Nick Nurse and Masai Ujiri are in their own ways magician and I’m absolutely jealous of everything they’ve built. More than the Bucks or the Mavericks, maybe even more than the Spurs, I really wish the Kings would emulate the current system of the Raptors.

And now I will root for that team to lose. Convincingly.

Prediction

The Raptors lose convincingly.

Kings: 118, Raptors: 104