Houston Rockets (22-13, sixth in the Western Conference) vs. Sacramento Kings (8-30, 15th in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Sacramento, California; Sunday, 9 p.m. EST<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: Sacramento enters the matchup with Houston as losers of seven straight games.<\/p>\n
The Kings are 6-24 against Western Conference opponents. Sacramento is 7-21 against opponents with a winning record.<\/p>\n
The Rockets are 12-12 in Western Conference play. Houston leads the Western Conference with 16.4 offensive rebounds per game led by Steven Adams averaging 4.5.<\/p>\n
The Kings average 10.4 made 3-pointers per game this season, 2.3 fewer makes per game than the Rockets give up (12.7). The Rockets are shooting 48.3% from the field, 1.3% lower than the 49.6% the Kings’ opponents have shot this season.<\/p>\n
The teams play for the third time this season. The Kings won the last matchup 125-124 in overtime on Dec. 22, with DeMar DeRozan scoring 27 points in the win.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Russell Westbrook is averaging 14.5 points, 6.5 rebounds and 6.8 assists for the Kings. DeRozan is averaging 19.7 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
Kevin Durant is scoring 26.2 points per game with 5.3 rebounds and 4.4 assists for the Rockets. Amen Thompson is averaging 20.4 points and 8.6 rebounds while shooting 56.5% over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Kings: 2-8, averaging 106.3 points, 41.1 rebounds, 24.1 assists, 8.8 steals and 5.2 blocks per game while shooting 44.7% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 122.4 points per game.<\/p>\n
Rockets: 5-5, averaging 112.5 points, 49.8 rebounds, 24.1 assists, 8.2 steals and 5.9 blocks per game while shooting 47.3% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 108.5 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Kings: Keegan Murray: out (ankle), Domantas Sabonis: out (knee).<\/p>\n
Rockets: Isaiah Crawford: out (illness), Fred VanVleet: out for season (acl), Alperen Sengun: out (ankle).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets (22-13, sixth in the Western Conference) vs. Sacramento Kings (8-30, 15th in the Western Conference) Sacramento,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[214411,4225,64,63,590,31647,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-403955","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-214411","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-nba-basketball","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}