Sacramento Kings Favored To End Losing Skid, Compound Jazz’s Frustrations

The Sacramento Kings are on a losing spell but are hoping to end all that when they host the Utah Jazz Saturday at the Golden 1 Center.

The Kings are -9 favorites to prevail over the Jazz in this encounter. The moneyline is -375 for Sacramento and +335 for Utah, according to Oddssharks.com.

The Kings and the Jazz have already met thrice this NBA regular season. The Kings took the first two games, while the Jazz won their last meeting recently.

Sacramento is coming off a stinging loss to the Boston Celtics, no thanks to the 36-point explosion of Jayson Tatum.

The Kings’ De’Aaron Fox led the way with 18 points along with three assists. Domantas Sabonis finished with a triple-double effort of 16 points, 13 rebounds and 12 assists.

“I feel like we all kind of felt it today,” Sabonis said via ESPN. “It’s not an excuse. That’s a part of the schedule. Every team goes through it. At the end of the day we just had to fight through it and do a better job in the second half.”

Utah, meanwhile, bowed to the Portland Trail Blazers Wednesday, 115-127.

Jazz’s Lauri Markkanen led the losing cause with 40 points and 12 rebounds, while Kris Dunn added 15 points coming off the bench.

“We looked a step slow kind of on everything defensively tonight,” Utah coach Will Hardy said post-game, according to ESPN.

Adding to the woes of the Jazz is the status of Markkanen. The Finnish player suffered a sore left hand after he got hit in the fourth quarter of that matchup.

“The X-ray was good, clean. I don’t know more about it, but we’ll see how it feels tomorrow and go from there,” Markkanen said in the same ESPN report. “Once you get going, you don’t really think about it. But then obviously at dead balls and stuff it just happens to (hurt) again.”

The Kings and the Jazz will mix it up Saturday, with tip-off set for 10 p.m. EDT. The game will be shown over ATT Sportsnet Rocky Mountain, with live streaming also available via FuboTV.