Phoenix Suns Remain Favorite Over Surging Kings Despite Kevin Durant’s Absence

The Sacramento Kings are looking for their third win, but it appears they will have their work cut out for them when they visit the Phoenix Suns at the Footprint Center Saturday.

Aside from holding home-court advantage, oddsmakers picked the Suns as -3.5 favorites to prevail over the Kings, according to USA Today. The moneyline for this game is set at -160 for Phoenix and +133 for Sacramento.

In their regular season series matchup, Phoenix leads Sacramento, coming out with wins in their first two meetings. In their last game against each other, the Suns hacked out a 120-109 win in February.

The Suns are on a four-game winning streak, the last of which was a 132-101 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder Wednesday. This was the game where Kevin Durant was supposed to make his home debut, but a pregame mishap altered those plans, The Athletic reported.

Durant is reportedly expected to miss three weeks due to an ankle injury.

Regardless, Devin Booker held up the fort for Phoenix Wednesday, dropping 44 points along with four assists. Backing him up was Terrence Ross, who had 24 markers, while Chris Paul chipped in 18 of his own, together with nine dimes.

“The city’s been waiting on this, it was a big day,” Booker said after the game, according to a report by ESPN. “We’ll reschedule the party. The people that missed out on it tonight, I tried to give them a little something to make it better.”

Meanwhile, the Kings are coming off a huge 122-117 win over the New York Knicks. It was their second consecutive win.

Domantas Sabonis led the way with a triple-double performance of 24 points, 13 rebounds and 10 assists. De’Aaron Fox added 23 points and seven assists in that win.

Despite the win, Kings coach Mike Brown was far from satisfied, particularly about the team’s job on the boards.

“I am not happy with the way that we played tonight … 23 offensive rebounds. Happy about the win, but that does not sit well with me at all. If we don’t fix that, we’re going to get our behinds kicked come playoff time. That’s when the big boys show up,” Brown was quoted as saying by ESPN after the game.

The Kings will try to snap the winning run of the Suns and continue their winning ways as well. The game is set to start at 10 p.m. EST Saturday and will be telecast on Bally Sports. Live streaming is also available via FuboTV.