Two teams trending in a positive direction after a shaky start and recent lineup shuffling lock horns Monday night when the Denver Nuggets visit the Sacramento Kings for the first time this season.
Each team enters on a winning streak. The Nuggets have won two in a row after an 11-10 start, and the Kings have prevailed in three straight to get back to .500 after opening 10-13.
The game features a head-to-head between the NBA’s triple-double leaders of recent years.
Denver’s Nikola Jokic is seeking to regain the crown he had swiped from him by Domantas Sabonis last season, when the Kings center had 26 triple-doubles to the two-time champ’s 25. Jokic leads 9-4 this year.
Russell Westbrook, who joined the Nuggets this year, is the last player other than Jokic and Sabonis to win the triple-double title. He totaled a league-best 38 while with the Washington Wizards in 2020-21.
Jokic and Westbrook already have posted historic triple-doubles this season.
Jokic passed Magic Johnson for third on the all-time list with his ninth of the season, the 139th of his career, on Dec. 5 in Cleveland.
Why he hasn’t added to his total in the last three games — he coupled 56 points with 16 rebounds and 48 points with 14 rebounds in road wins at Washington and Atlanta, before coasting through 30 minutes in a blowout win over the visiting Los Angeles Clippers on Friday.
Jokic trails Oscar Robertson (181) and Westbrook (200) on the all-time list, with Westbrook’s latest coming Nov. 19 at Memphis. It was his only triple-double of the season.
Westbrook had a double-double in the loss at Washington, then missed by one point at Atlanta as he got just his fourth and fifth starts of the season with Jamal Murray dealing with plantar fasciitis.
Murray returned from a two-game absence to replace Westbrook in the starting lineup against the Clippers, but Westbrook remained highly productive off the bench, including a team-best plus-21 plus/minus in 24 minutes.
Denver coach Michael Malone said the goal moving forward is for Westbrook, whether he starts or not, to play more in tandem with Jokic.
“When Russ is out there with Nikola, good things happen,” Malone observed. “So what I’ve tried to do recently was getting Russ into the game earlier so he has as many minutes on the court to share with Nikola Jokic. That two-man combo has been very effective on both ends of the floor.”
Kings coach Mike Brown also has been tinkering with the lineup, inserting super sub Malik Monk into the starting five for the last six games. He had at least 16 points in the first five of those games before becoming more of a distributor with nine assists in Thursday’s 111-109 win at New Orleans.
Sabonis hasn’t had a triple-double since Monk got his promotion, but he did contribute 32 points and 20 rebounds to the win over the Pelicans.
Brown noted one key to the team’s recent success has been how Kevin Huerter has responded to his new role as a backup, and how the coach in turn has responded to his sub’s performance in any given stint.
“Can he play at a high level (for 12 straight minutes)? He’s shown the last couple of games that he can do it,” Brown noted. “We have to be ready to throw somebody out on that floor, though, to sub for him, in case his play falls off at all.”