Preview: The Nuggets aim to overcome their unlucky season by defeating the Sacramento Kings.
In tonight’s final regular-season game between the two teams, the Denver Nuggets look to defeat the Sacramento Kings and claim their first victory of the year. Denver has lost all three of its previous games that were played back-to-back for one of the teams. However, now that both teams have had time to recover, perhaps this will finally be the potential playoff matchup that it is. The Nuggets just need to lock down every game for home court while also possibly defeating Malone’s former team as a favour. The Kings will be trying to get over their most recent loss to the Miami Heat, who were missing several players due to suspension, including Jimmy Butler.
How to watch/listen: Unless it’s the idealised form from the 18th century, Denver Stiffs does not support piracy. When accessible, Altitude TV is accessible on DirecTV, DirecTV Stream, and Fubo TV. NBA League pass available to non-Nuggets supporters. Radio 92.5 Altitude. Assume you recently received a call-up from the Grand Rapids Gold and are under a two-way contract.
Competing Website: Kings Herald
Injury Report*: Sasha Vezenkov is out (ankle), Vlatko Cancar is out (knee), and Hunter Tyson is questionable (finger).
The Trio of Items
The thing to be aware of is that Denver must shoot frequently and early.
In the whole NBA, the Sacramento Kings allow opponents the highest 3-point percentage. With a Defensive Rating of about 20, they are a bottom-third scoring defence that gives up 118 points per game. You can effectively get what you want against the Kings because they don’t have a strong defence, a great perimeter defence, or a shot-blocker. The Kings get you by forcing you to play their style of play and by taking away your fastbreaks (they recover defensively quite well). They just do it better than most. They play an up-and-down style with lots of ball movement.
groups. They don’t do it better than Denver does, but they HAVE done it better than Denver in EVERY matchup this year. The Nuggets need to win tonight by providing the offence by making those open perimeter shots and remembering their defence for the second half, which they forgot right before the All Star Break. The Nuggets have been too fatigued or careless to handle business against the Kings. When playing at its best, Denver’s defence is simply superior to anything the Kings can throw at the Nuggets. However, if this game descends into a slop-fest, as it did in the previous meeting, Sacramento is equally capable of pursuing Denver once more.
The key point to keep in mind is that a team game against Sacramento is preferable to The Jokic Show.
Jokic had one outstanding performance (36 / 13 / 14 in December) and two below-average performances against the Kings this season; for everyone else, these would have been fantastic nights, but for him in particular, they meant Denver suffered a couple of disappointing losses. Despite not having a DPOY candidate at the centre position, Sacramento has the second-best scoring defence percentage in the league. Similar to Jokic, Domantas Sabonis excels at positioning himself to prevent players from getting to their favourite
patches. Nevertheless, Jokic is well-rested this time around, so if the other Nuggets players execute their roles well while he orchestrates, he shouldn’t need to have another fantastic scoring night. Jokic can win it for the Nuggets if they take the lead, but it would be ideal if they started strong and didn’t let Malik Monk and De’Aaron Fox expose them once more. The team has a fantastic chance to use this to their advantage and win back the game from before the All-Star Break.
It is best to wager on Jokic 2+ threes (+200).
That is not a very good bet because the Nuggets are 7.5 point favourites. The last time these teams faced off, I advised betting on Jokic to make threes, but it didn’t work out. This time, I’m recommending
