Dec. 4 will mark the first regular season tilt between the Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns, as well as the first time will Marvin Bagley III and DeAndre Ayton face off.
Barring an injury to Marvin Bagley III or 2018’s #1 overall pick DeAndre Ayton or somebody sitting out for other reasons (looking at you Los Angeles) the top-two picks in the 2018 NBA Draft will face off for the first time on Dec. 4 when the Sacramento Kings travel to Phoenix to take on the Suns.
The matchup will be the first of four games that Phoenix will play against Sacramento this season. It will also be the first time DeAndre Ayton faces one of the other top-3 draft picks this season.
During the 2017-18 season, every game saw both teams score over 90-points, although that’s more of an indictment on both teams defense than it is a praise of their offenses. They went 1-3 overall versus the Suns last season, with an average margin of victory in those games of 5.5 points. Including an incredible game early in the season where now-former King Garrett Temple went nuclear in an overtime loss.
Not only will fans be treated to a battle of the drafts top-two picks, but it will also be a battle of high-scoring guards in Buddy Hield and Devin Booker.
Both players struggled with efficiency against each other last season, with Booker scoring 24 points per game on a 41.5/31.3/81.1 shooting split in two games. For the Kings, Hield chipped in 12.5 points on a rough shooting split of 38.5/37.5/66.7 in four games against the Suns.
The storylines don’t end there, however, as the matchup will also be a battle of two of the 2017 NBA Draft’s top-five picks in De’Aaron Fox and Josh Jackson. Last season, they put up near identical stat-lines with Fox posting 13.3 points, 5.3 rebounds and 3.0 assists per game while Jackson posted a line of 13.5/4.5/2.
There’s also a chance this could be one of the last times the Sacramento Kings and Phoenix Suns face each other as the Western Conference’s bottom feeders. While they may not be playoff contenders *yet*, you’d be hard-pressed to find a team that has more sticking points in a game against the Kings than the Suns do. Something that’ll certainly make it a series to monitor throughout the season.
They may not be battling for the #1 pick this year like last season, but four players taken top-five in the last two drafts will be playing in this one. That’s worth a watch on its own.