Sacramento Kings in town tonight to play OKC at Chesapeake Energy Arena. Kings come in as the current No. 10 seed in the West—which means nothing right now other than they’re one of a generic group of sub .500 teams in the West that aren’t very good.
Kings last game was a win over Phoenix which gave Coach George Karl his 1,155th win and tied him with Phil Jackson at the No. 5 spot on the all-time winningest NBA coaching list. Since Jackson hasn’t coached since 2010-11, Karl’s next win puts him above Jackson on the list. Karl’s other NBA head coaching stops include Cleveland, Golden State, Seattle, and Denver. Karl has never won an NBA championship, but his ’96 Seattle Sonic team made it to the NBA Finals before losing to the Chicago Bulls in six games.
So far in the Karl era in Sacramento—the Kings look pretty much the same as a sub .500 team with some nice athletes led by Demarcus Cousins, Rudy Gay, and Rajon Rondo, but still a team who can’t really pull it together. Kings are 4-11 on the road and 4-14 against Western Conference teams. In the only meeting so far this season between the teams, OKC played awful yet stole a game at the end with Kevin Durant making a couple of clutch plays in what was probably Durant’s worse game of the season.
OKC’s Thunder comes in on a roll with a four game winning streak and an overall record of 24-10. Thunder are 16-4 at home and have lost only twice this season to Western Conference teams with the losses being on the road to Houston and Memphis, and both by single digits. OKC is a Vegas 11 point home favorite tonight.
The January schedule for Oklahoma City is very favorable for a monster month of wins. Tonight isn’t any exception. Since the insertion of Cam Payne as the backup point guard–OKC’s bench has come back alive and been a plus instead of a negative. Payne has brought much better ball movement to the unit of which Anthony Morrow and Enes Kanter have benefitted from the most. Plus, with Payne in the game–there’s no need for the ball to stick in Dion Waiter’s hands. There’s no question as to who should be unit leader. Even Kyle Singler has suddenly found some life of late—to date it’s been good with Cameron Payne on the floor.
This should be a stretch of the season where OKC wins most of their games and becomes even more comfortable with Billy Donovan and vice versa.