SACRAMENTO — Following Oklahoma City’s first loss of the season, the Thunder (8-1) will take on the Kings (3-5) in Sacramento on Friday night for the first set of NBA Cup Group Play games.
The Thunder appeared in last year’s NBA Cup Championship where they were defeated by the Milwaukee Bucks. Now, OKC will look to win its first NBA Cup Group Play matchup against the Kings in hopes of making another December trip to Las Vegas for the semifinal and championship games.
Standing in their way is a Kings team filled with veteran NBA talent, including a number of former Thunder players such as Russell Westbrook, Domantas Sabonis, Dennis Schroder, Dario Saric and Doug McDermott.
Although the Kings are one of the oldest rosters in the league, Sacramento is led by a pair of proven scorers, Zach LaVine (27.4 PPG) and DeMar DeRozan (21.0 PPG), as well as Sabonis who is the current league leader in rebounds (14.2 RPG). Sabonis also led the league in rebounds per game last season with 13.9 RPG.
Westbrook, who is the most recent addition the Kings, notched his 204th triple double in a win against the Golden State Warriors on Wednesday and surpassed Jason Kidd for the most career regular season rebounds (8,734).
Tonight will be the second matchup of the season between the Kings and the Thunder who defeated Sacramento in their first contest, 107-101. Although the Thunder trailed for most of their first game against the Kings, a pair of clutch threes from Lugentz Dort and Alex Caruso gave the Thunder the lead in the closing minutes before Shai Gilgeous-Alexander hit a dagger from behind the arc with 16 seconds left, extending the lead to six.
SGA finished the game with 31 points. Aaron Wiggins and Ajay Mitchell both had major offensive contributions as well, finishing with 18 points each.
A big factor for the Thunder tonight will be availability of Chet Holmgren who didn’t play in their first matchup against the Kings or in Wednesday night’s crushing loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. According to the most recent injury report on ESPN, Holmgren is not listed as out, which would bode well for OKC who could use his interior presence and scoring punch. For the Kings, the availability of Sabonis will be essential as he is currently listed as questionable for tonight’s game, according to ESPN.
Tonight’s matchup is the third of the Thunder’s four-game road trip as they will take on the Grizzlies in Memphis on Sunday.
Here are the most recent injury reports for both teams as of noon on Friday, according to ESPN:
THUNDER
Lugentz Dort (Day-to-day)Aaron Wiggins (Out)Jalen Williams (Out)Nikola Topic (Out)Kenrich Williams (Out)Thomas Sorber (Out)
KINGS
Domantas Sabonis (Day-to-day)Keegan Murray (Out)
Tonight’s game tips off at 9 p.m. (CT). You can watch it on NBA League Pass or FanDuel Sports Network Oklahoma.
If you are unfamiliar with the NBA Cup, you can find a full breakdown of the rules and format here: Emirates NBA Cup 101: Rules, format and how it works.
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