It is difficult to return after a long absence. After a period of transformation and refinement, after a disappointing, somewhat surprising early exit, you are thrown back into the spotlight with expectations so far out of your control that all results short of perfection appear to be failures. This team, the city, our fan base, hell, yours truly: we've all run out of precious empty calendar slots in which to ignore the season and all the expectations that come with it. The countdown timers have been forgotten, our speculations, forecasts and predictions have been completely wiped out. All that remains of our dry and twisted conversations is the dust of worried, expectant silence. The only thing left for the Kings to do is play.

This franchise is celebrating its fortieth year in Sacramento. The better part of these four decades has disappointed us, hurt us, ultimately met our expectations, and then dashed our hopes in ways we couldn't have imagined just moments before it happened and invented new ways to force us to do it to question our thoughts with the question “Why am I doing this to myself?” If Rudy Gay's “Basketball Hell” really exists here in Sacramento, then it is populated primarily by those whose greatest sin was loving a team more than respecting themselves.

And yet here we are again: we are returning. With a level of hope reserved only for death cults and Kings fans, we return to our team, to this fandom, to every corner of the world and the World Wide Web to discuss, debate and, if necessary, shout at those who dare to say that This city, this team does not have what it takes to reach new, previously unreachable heights. Keon Ellis Is an All-Defense First Team candidate. The Kings Do have three All-Stars. Keegan Murray Is Somewhere between Paul George, Peja Stojakovic and Kawhi Leonard. Last season Was a coincidence. The can be a championship level team.

Yes, it's true that basketball, like our fight against the endless ignorance of talking heads and content creators, never really ends. But it works at idle. And it is just as true that today your support, your excitement, your fear leads to a place that is familiar and yet completely new and unknown, because today –

The idle time has expired.

It's time to do something – to show this dramatic, idiotic, all-encompassing, ever-crazier community of tweet thieves and superfans, do-everything-right-and-burn-everything gamers, what the hell we are everyone has been talking about – has come.

So shake off any lint you find from the jerseys in your closet, or from that shirsey pinned to the wall, or whatever's in that freshly delivered bag that's currently resting in your dresser. Tear your posters from the security tape and your signed photos from their frames. Blow the dirt off the king's hat on your indoor tree. Pull out of retirement that foam finger, purple polyester wig, and plastic crown you stole from the photo booth at your friend's wedding. Pick up the cowbell from your desk and shake it just to make sure it still rings loud enough for everyone who wants to avoid it to hear it. And when you're finally done thinking about what you're going to bring to the game tonight, to the bar, or to your buddy's house for the game, once you've cleaned out every memorabilia and every memento of love for this team, forget about these City not to finally wipe away the accumulated ashes and ashes that haphazardly accumulated on your soul in the abrupt exodus at the end of last season.

The only thing left in the dust after today are all the preconceptions this world has about how far Sacramento can go.

When: Thursday, October 23, 7:00 p.m. PST
Where: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, CA
TV: NBCSCA – Mark Jones (play-by-play)
radio: Sactown Sports 1140am

For your consideration

Two words, good trade: I won't do much to transition last season into this one. It was what it was. It took them two injuries to make the playoffs, a half dozen losses to terrible teams to make the playoffs, and they were just one win against the Pelicans away from making the playoffs. They didn't make the playoffs. Call it hubris, call it bad luck, call it a taxi and get out of here quick because I'm done with this.

On the task at hand: The Kings feel improved, not necessarily remade or new, but certainly improved in a Western Conference that more closely resembles a sixteen-team BattleBots competition than a professional basketball conference. There are 12 to 14 teams out here all hoping to make the playoffs, and just as many teams wouldn't surprise me if they made it. Each team is designed to destroy a fair number of other teams, with fatal weaknesses inevitably being exploited by a significant number of other teams. Your robot is fast? His defense is easy. Your robot can beat the crap out of anything in reach with its three hammers? It's top heavy and dead in the water when some of these hammers fail. Your robot is 6 feet tall, can take threes, stand up, block shots, and run the floor? The guy driving it belongs in a Sun City with a 24/7 fall risk plan… but enough about Chris Paul.

Tonight the Kings face the suddenly new Timberwolves, who a few weeks ago traded their second-best player, Karl-Anthony Towns, the only player up front in almost a decade, for Julius Randle and the oft-desired player, quickly forgotten, the little one Ragu himself, Donte DiVincenzo. This represents a monumental shift for the Wolves, who were considered contenders for a move out of the West just before training camp began and are now viewed as… I'm not entirely sure about this… stranger, wilder contenders that might come out of the West. I'm not trying to be sarcastic or facetious here – they're just a lot clunkier and less sexy than they were a month ago. Randle and the newly extended Gobert could be a Zach Randolph-Marc Gasol for a new generation, while Anthony Edwards tries his hand at reincarnating Michael Jordan from time to time. The aforementioned DiVincenzo portrays himself as a Gary Payton-level hitmaker, but depending on the night he can veer wildly into Patrick Beverley territory. That doesn't mean he won't be nipping at Malik Monk's heels for Sixth Man of the Year honors, but an 11-3 opening night loss to the Lakers doesn't make an offensively strong Sacramento team fear you, let alone the rest of them Nova boys miss you. Jaden McDaniels is a first-team All-Defense-level player if he can learn not to foul. Naz Reid will be incredibly important to this iteration of Wolves, perhaps to the point where he earns the award he won by starting at the end of last season. I love the Wolves, I cheer for them every night they don't play the Kings (or Thunder). This is just one of those things where we need to look back 30 games into the season to get a clear picture.

All in all: The wolves are dangerous. They're deep, they're incredibly well-coached, they have the best offensive talent and the best defensive talent on the field, and despite all the shenanigans surrounding the KAT trade, the team with those three things wins the game more often than not. Sacramento can't afford to be casual and careless – if they want to make the playoffs this season, they can't start this season with early, regrettable losses that will ruin them again late in the year. A shooting night that's anything like what they did in preseason and this game will get out of hand at halftime.

After this game, we still have 81 more games to discuss the Kings, their expectations and how quickly we should freak out if the worst happens, but tonight is tabula rasa. I don't care how they perform, who gets the shots, or how they get hit…just get a W and we'll build from there.

The little stuff

Huerter vs. Keon: It wouldn't surprise me if Mike Brown uses Kevin Huerter the same way he used KZ Okpala in the early games of Keegan Murray's career. Sure, Brown mentioned that he doesn't like to see players lose a spot due to injury, but Kevin was well on his way to losing that spot when Desmond Bane hit his wing against a drumstick. My completely wrong prediction here is that Brown gets Kevin 3-10 games in the starting lineup, which for some time tells him that he needs to play better defense to stay in the starting lineup, while at the same time motivating Keon to step up to focus on better shots than he did in the starting lineup preseason and gave Kevin the motivation to play better defense in his eventual move to the bench. Brown has his justification for starting Keon, Kevin has the fire under him to improve his play on both ends when he's off the bench, and Keon can know he deserves it based on one always a growing sample of data that says he should have already done it.

Behind enemy lines: I'll be at the game tonight, in the lower bowl, with two Wolves fans, a Raptors fan and another Kings fan. If you're rocking Kings Herald clothes and a guy who looks like he's selling you Molly in a nightclub in Prague compliments you on it, then it's me… well… it's probably me. If he offers to sell you Molly, look for security (or buy it, I don't care), but that's definitely NOT me. The only thing I'm trying to get across to you is the idea that a certain metallic color would look good on a Kings jersey, and you might want to call security for that too.

forecast

82-0, baby. Saboni's MVP. Monk, 6MOTY. Fox, $345 million. Golden jerseys are in preparation.

Kings: 122, Wolves: 116