Sacramento Kings open the 2026-27 NBA season against LA Clippers at Intuit Dome on Thursday, with both rosters barely recognisable from the ones that met four times last season.

The Clippers have moved on from both Kawhi Leonard and Bennedict Mathurin since April's most recent meeting, while the Kings have waived DeMar DeRozan and parted ways with Russell Westbrook.

How do Sacramento Kings and LA Clippers head into their NBA opener?

Neither side carries a record into this one, since it is the first game of the regular season for both, but the summer and autumn business tells its own story.

The Clippers sent Kawhi Leonard back to Toronto at the end of June in a deal completed in September, taking Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick the other way along with a stack of future draft capital, and that trade followed an earlier move in February that shipped James Harden to Cleveland for Darius Garland.

Lawrence Frank's front office had insisted in the spring that the plan was to build around Leonard, so the reversal inside a few months marks a genuine change of course rather than a gradual transition.

Sacramento's rebuild has been just as blunt, with DeMar DeRozan waived in July after two seasons averaging 20.3 points, and Russell Westbrook allowed to leave once his contract expired.

In their place, the Kings handed a starting role to lottery rookie Darius Acuff Jr. and brought in Ben Simmons on a one-year deal, only for Simmons to be reported to have suffered a serious Achilles injury in practice within days of the opener.

The result is two teams that finished 2025-26 a combined 20 games under .500, both well outside the Western Conference play-in picture, walking into opening night without several of the faces who defined last season's head-to-head series.

The gap in points conceded stands out above everything else in that table, and it lines up with what actually happened when these two sides played four times last season, since the Clippers won three of those meetings by taking care of the defensive end while Sacramento's defence has long been the issue holding the Kings back.

Both teams were even on turnovers across the full season, which is a reminder that neither group is especially sloppy with the ball, so the separation in this matchup is far more about what happens on defence and the offensive glass than it is about who forces more mistakes.

None of those figures account for personnel losses as significant as Leonard, Harden, DeRozan and Westbrook all leaving within the last eight months.

Sacramento Kings vs. LA Clippers: who is missing for the opener?

Four days out from tip-off, Sacramento's starting five looked settled, with Simmons reported to have won the job ahead of De'Andre Hunter and Precious Achiuwa through training camp.

That plan appears to have been torn up at the worst possible moment, with Simmons reported to have gone down in practice just days before the opener in what is described as a likely season-ending injury, and Hunter now the probable replacement in that forward spot alongside Acuff, Zach LaVine, Keegan Murray and Domantas Sabonis.

Sacramento's frontcourt depth was already stretched before that news, with both Raynaud and Cardwell sidelined, leaving Precious Achiuwa as the clear first man off the bench at center.

The Clippers have their own injury list to work around, with Ingram and Strus both confirmed out of the starting five they were originally pencilled in for, handing extra minutes to Rui Hachimura and rookie guard Keaton Wagler alongside Brook Lopez, who heads into the opener as the team's starting center.

Kings vs. Clippers: the individual battles that could decide it

Key Matchups · 2025-26 season stats

Shot creator vs. floor general

Zach LaVine

SAC

VS

Darius Garland

LAC

19.2PPG

2.3APG

6.7APG

18.8PPG

With DeRozan and Westbrook both gone, LaVine is Sacramento's clearest scoring option, while Garland now runs the Clippers' offence as the primary ball handler following the Harden trade. Whoever controls tempo in that backcourt battle sets the terms for the rest of the game.

Control of the glass

Domantas Sabonis

SAC

VS

Brook Lopez

LAC

11.4RPG

15.8PPG

8.5PPG

3.6RPG

Sabonis takes on added rebounding responsibility with Raynaud and Cardwell both sidelined, and the matchup favours him on the glass against a Clippers center in Lopez whose value leans far more on spacing and rim protection than board work.

Player props for LA Clippers vs. Sacramento Kings

Sacramento Kings vs. LA Clippers head-to-head record

LA Clippers won three of the four meetings between these two clubs last season, including a 138-109 rout in the most recent fixture, with Sacramento's only win coming by nine points away from home in March.

That series carries little weight for Thursday's opener given how much turnover both rosters have been through since, with none of Leonard, Harden, DeRozan or Westbrook involved in any of those four results still on either team.

A fresh series starts here, and fittingly the NBA's schedule-makers have paired these two sides again on the final day of the regular season in April, bookending the year with the exact same fixture.

Betting tips and score prediction for Kings vs. Clippers

A short-handed Kings team should still be competitive for long stretches behind LaVine and Sabonis, but LA Clippers have the fresher pieces and the better recent offensive identity, and that edge should be enough to see the home side open the new NBA schedule with a win.