Kings vs Clippers Picks, Prediction Today | Sunday, Feb. 25

Here's everything you need to know about Kings vs. Clippers on Sunday, Feb. 25 — our expert prediction and betting picks for today.

The Kings face the Clippers in Los Angeles on Sunday night. This matchup has been a strange one the past two seasons, with both teams going on winning streaks in the head-to-head matchups. The Clippers have won and covered the two meetings this season, but the previous three went to the Kings.

Both teams are coming off wins against teams toward the bottom of the league, but neither team was able to cover the spread. With the playoff race tightening up in the home stretch of the season, both squads will be gunning for a win, but it’ll come down to a few factors to figure out which team that will be.

Let's get to our Kings vs. Clippers prediction and pick.

The Kings have had an interesting season. They’re following up their surprise run from last year with another impressive run in 2023-24. One thing that’s carried over for Sacramento has been the anomalous trend of their defense being much better on the road. They’re certainly not a defense-first team, but they’ll need to improve on that end if they want to make a meaningful run in the playoffs.

Despite a defensive improvement away from Golden 1 Center, the Kings still aren’t elite on the defensive end of the floor on the road. The Kings halfcourt defense goes from 27^th at home, to 19^th on the road, per Cleaning the Glass. In transition, they improve from 27^th all the way to 17^th.

The books haven’t caught up to this discrepancy yet either. At home, the Kings are the most profitable team to the over, ahead of the Pacers and Hawks. On the road, they’re the fourth-most profitable team to the under, behind only the Heat, Nuggets and Cavaliers.

A big reason for Sacramento’s defensive struggles is its inability to the defend the perimeter. The Kings don’t give up a lot of 3-pointers — ranking just 12^th in opponent 3-point rate—but they allow opponents to shoot 40.7% from deep, which is the highest percentage in the league.

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The Clippers aren’t the ideal team to capitalize on that perimeter weakness of the Kings, but they have a few players who might be able to take a crack at it. As a team, the Clippers take just 35.4% of their shots from behind the arc, but James Harden and Paul George take a lot of long-range attempts individually — especially from above the break, where the Kings are most susceptible. Harden takes 51%, while Paul George takes 38% from above the break, putting them in the 96^th and 82^nd percentile respectively.

Like the Kings, the Clippers have found success this season with their offense, oftentimes at the expense of defense. However, the Clippers have inverted tendencies when it comes to their home/away splits. The Clippers improve from a 119.6 defensive rating on the road (15^th), to a 111.9 at home (11^th).

The Clippers are already an under team (22-31 overall), but they’re 15-10-1 to the under at home as opposed to 16-12-1 on the road — a difference in 5.2% in ROI.

I lean heavily to the under in this matchup based off the home/road splits for both teams, but I think we could see the total move up to an even better number closer to tipoff, so I’ll hold off for now. Instead, I’ll bet on Harden to exceed his 3-point prop of 2.5 at most books.

Harden has made 3+ from deep in seven of his last 10 head-to-head matchups against the Kings and in his last 10 games overall where he’s averaging 7.4 attempts.

I think he’ll see the volume, and while the full-game under isn’t perfectly correlated with a Harden’s 3-point over, the total is high enough that we don’t have to squint too hard to see them both hitting.

Follow in the app to see how I play the total in this game (@nbaWatts)

Pick: James Harden Over 2.5 3-Pointers Made (-120)

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