Last night’s win over Portland was encouraging, but let’s be honest, the competition is about to ramp up slightly. The Next five games feature @Lakers, Celtics, Suns, @Nets, and @Wizards. The goal is to try to win at least 3 out of every 5 games. So far, 0-5 and 4-1. They are trending in the right direction.

While I look forward to every battle against the Lakers, I’m not holding my breath for this one. Maybe we’ll get lucky and some AD load-management protocol will kick in for Friday’s game? Although crazier things have happened, the Kings tend to flop in big games against LA.

The Celtics have the leagues best record, but they have been bitten by the injury bug of late and G1C will be rocking. A chance? 12:30 starts in Sac rarely go well as I’ve been to too many early start family games of late and always seem to walk out disappointed.

I truly believe the Kings will be highly motivated when they get their rematch with Phoenix next Tuesday. Deandre Ayton killed them last time, but he’s out. If the Kings can control Devon Booker like they controlled Damian Lillard last night, they might be able to pull that one off. Revenge games are always fun. Remember the Utah games earlier this season?

The Nets are a one-man show with Kyrie Irving and I personally think he is going to destroy all the good vibes they built up last season. They are very beatable but tend to really beat down on the Kings every year. Tossup.

Same goes for the Wizards. Every year we go into that road game thinking we’ll get right and walk out feeling so very wrong.

3-2? It could happen, but the variants are very big, and we’ll just have to wait and see. Regardless, there is no way we should be even considering throwing in the towel so early in the season. Right now, the Kings are only two games out of the 8th spot.