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Tonight the Utah Jazz host the dysfunctional Sacramento Kings. They have elected to play without DeMarcus Cousins, Nik Stauskas, and Rudy Gay for health reasons, and will join Darren Collison and Eric Moreland on the injured list. The Jazz will be without Alec Burks, and while Trey Burke went through a full practice on Tuesday, he is listed as probable for tonight.
The Jazz should have no trouble beating the Kings if they play their game. Sacramento played last night, and the Kings are starting a three game road trip tonight. Utah had two nights off and their main players Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors had a lot of rest in their last game, the Sunday night victory over the Kings 101-95. Rodney Hood was the hero of that game and he is really coming into his own.
Last night the Kings played without DeMarcus Cousins and Carl Landry (suspended one game for coming off the bench in the game against the Jazz), which opened the door for rookie Sim Bhullar. Bhullar got off the bench and played in 16 total seconds last night, and entered NBA history as the first player of Indian descent to play in the league. He may be needed for more than 16 seconds tonight as Rudy Gobert has just been flat out too big for every single guy in the league this year. Gobert for all his talents isn't 7'5 and 400 pounds. Actually, at that size I think the mammalian classification lists you under 'whale'. I could be wrong about that.
Either way, SimCity is pretty big. But George Karl doesn't really play young guys that much, it'll be interesting to at least me to see if he gets on the floor tonight. Jason Thompson and Derrick Williams has great games last night, and Reggie Evans did his thing. There aren't a lot of minutes available.
Utah will have to match up against Ben McLemore and Ray McCallum at the guard spots, but I like Dante Exum and Rodney Hood there. Omri Casspi had one of his best nights in the NBA last night, but Gordon Hayward should be a challenge for him.
This is the end of the game preview. I've written a lot over the last few years. I'm going to save some words for later.