Houston Rockets vs. Sacramento Kings game preview

The Houston Rockets and Sacramento Kings will get two looks at each other, with one game tonight and another Monday. Both games are at Toyota Center.

Last season, the Kings finished a surprising third in the West, and look the dreaded Golden State Warriors to seven games before ultimately falling. The Kings are 2-2 this season, with both losses coming to...the Warriors. Their wins came in Utah and at home in a fun overtime game over the Los Angeles Lakers. I guess if you’re a Kings fan, the Lakers are your forever rivals and the Warriors are the current team you have beef with. De’Aaron Fox did miss the second Warriors game, but he’s a game time decision tonight.

Houston will be debuting their City Edition jerseys tonight. I’ll admit that I didn’t love them at first, but they’ve grown on me. I especially and unironically love the dunking astronaut. Seriously, the whole jersey should have been made out of that. I know it will be the logo at midcourt, but there should be hats with just the dunking astronaut.

Also, the dunking astronaut needs a name. I don’t want to keep typing “dunking astronaut,” even if that is a pretty cool image. I also don’t want to name them after a former player or astronaut. Honestly, a real person getting to be the name of a dunking astronaut seems unfair to everyone in Rockets history besides Hakeem.

Fictional characters seem to work best. Maybe Mark Swatney, which would be a take on Mark Watney from Andy Weir’s novel The Martian? But this astronaut is dunking, not blocking a shot. Unfortunately, Andrew Wiggins’s existence makes using an Ender’s Game reference here tougher. Dune’s got Paul Atreides, but his name doesn’t lend itself to basketball-related nicknames unless you want to go with Slamaud’dib. If anyone read Pierce Brown’s fantastic Red Rising books, you’d agree that Sevro au Ballca would be the best one.

Tip-off

7pm CT

How to Watch

Space City Home Network

Injuries

Houston

Tari Eason-OUT (leg)

Amen Thompson-OUT (ankle)

Sacramento

De’Aaron Fox-game time decision (ankle)

Trey Lyles-OUT (calf)

Filip Petrusev-game time decision (just got traded for the second time in like four days)

Looking ahead because we can

Monday at home against Sacramento