After the Oklahoma City Thunder’s defeat on Wednesday night against the Portland Trail Blazers, each team in the NBA now has at least one win and at least one defeat. The Thunder surely aren’t sweating it: they’re still atop the Western Conference standings and are the heavy favorites to do one game better than last season and win the Emirates NBA Cup.
Oklahoma City’s journey will begin tonight with a 10 p.m. ET clash against the Sacramento Kings in the opening game of West Group A action. Besides the players on each team who have been out all season, the Thunder will be without Aaron Wiggins, with Luguentz Dort questionable, and Sacramento will be without Domantas Sabonis.
Oklahoma City is a 12.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-675 on the Moneyline), and the point total is set to 234.5. The Kings, meanwhile, are +490 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down the NBA Cup opener for both teams and offer a prediction.
Oklahoma City Thunder at Sacramento Kings preview, prediction
The Thunder have dealt with plenty of injuries this season, as Jalen Williams has experienced a setback in his recovery from wrist surgery and Chet Holmgren has missed four games with a back issue, but regardless, the defending champions keep chugging along. MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has continued to do Gilgeous-Alexander things, averaging 33.3 points per game, Cason Wallace leads the league in steals, and Ajay Mitchell has emerged from obscurity to become a legitimate Sixth Man of the Year candidate. Once Williams returns and Dort’s jumper starts falling, Oklahoma City could go from great to historic.
The Kings are coming off of a win over the short-handed Golden State Warriors that saw them improve to 3-5, and in that game, Russell Westbrook turned back the clock with a 23-point, 16-rebound, 10-assist performance. Sacramento has dealt with some injuries as well, as Sabonis is set to miss his third game of the season, and Zach LaVine was absent for Wednesday’s triumph over Golden State. On the bright side, the Kings have enjoyed solid production from their veteran guard acquisitions, Westbrook and Dennis Schröder, and youngster Keon Ellis is blossoming into a productive three-and-D wing, but none of Sabonis, LaVine, and DeMar DeRozan has played up to his usual standard.
Thunder at Kings pick, best bet
If anything is guaranteed, it’s that Gilgeous-Alexander will score at least 30 points, which he has done in eight of his nine games so far this season. He’s done it in a variety of different ways: at the rim, from the midrange, from the free throw line, and, in recent games, from beyond the arc. The Thunder’s offense, almost as much as any other team’s, operates around Gilgeous-Alexander, who ranks fifth in the league in time of possession and fifth in usage rate. With him on the court, Oklahoma City has had a plus-10.4 net rating, with a turnover rate of just 10.0% and a 122.6 offensive rating. The Thunder have been much better defensively with him on the bench, but that’s more a result of a small sample size. Individually, he’s been fine — though not elite — on that side of the ball.
Gilgeous-Alexander’s individual defense almost doesn’t matter in the context of the team’s system, which has produced the league’s best defensive rating for the second straight season. Last season, Oklahoma City was 2.5 points per 100 possessions better than the Orlando Magic, and so far in 2025-26, that difference is 4.0 points per 100 possessions over the San Antonio Spurs. Being without Wiggins might hurt, given that the Thunder have been 12 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor so far this season, but he actually ranks last among rotation players in defensive box plus/minus. Six different Oklahoma City players average at least one steal per game.
Like the Thunder, Sacramento has dominated the turnover margin this season, averaging the third-fewest turnovers and the eighth-most steals, but that’s where the defensive comparisons end: the Kings have had the league’s 25th-ranked defense this season. In part, that’s because Sacramento hasn’t been able to stop opponents from two-point range, allowing the third-best percentage on attempts in the restricted area, the seventh-best mark in the non-restricted paint, and the second-best mark from the midrange. It has also conceded the 11th-most wide-open three-point attempts and has gotten lucky that opponents have only connected at the fourth-lowest rate. Oklahoma City has converted at the fourth-highest rate at the rim and the 11th-best percentage from the midrange, and it’s bound to improve on their 33.8% mark on on wide-open threes.
The Kings will need to dominate the glass against a team whose sole defensive weakness has been grabbing rebounds, but they rank last in rebounds per game. Sacramento did win the rebounding battle, 46-44, when these teams played on October 28, but the Thunder didn’t have Holmgren in that game, and the Kings did have Sabonis. It’ll be paramount for Sacramento to hit its corner threes, given that Oklahoma City has allowed the second-most corner tries in the league, but it has generated the 11th-fewest shots from that zone. Otherwise, the Kings could have trouble finding efficient shots: the Thunder have conceded the second-lowest percentage in each of the paint zones and the seventh-lowest from the midrange, and they’ve allowed a merely average number of wide-open threes.
Picking Oklahoma City to win in a blowout after it just blew a 20-point lead to the Trail Blazers is a boring answer, but it barely lost to a decent team despite Portland going 11-for-24 on wide-open triples without its two-way anchor in Holmgren. After trading away Jonas Valančiūnas during the offseason, Sacramento doesn’t have a reliable backup center, so it could struggle on the glass without Sabonis.
