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SAN FRANCISCO – The Kings of Sacramento just told us all where to shove our moral victories.
Hey, getting this far is already a win!
Look, at least you broke the playoff drought, you can build from here!
No shame in losing to the champions, keep your head up!
Forget every bit of that sound.
You know that Kings team that lost three consecutive games to the Golden State Warriors? The upstarts many expected to bow after a valiant effort against a more experienced, ruthless championship team that smelled blood in the water on a home floor where they went 33-8 during the regular season? Nowhere to be found during Game 6 on Friday night.
“People don’t think we would be here. Nobody thought we would be here but us,” said Kings guard Malik Monk after the game. “So that’s all the confidence we need. When we get into this crazy arena, man, it’s getting crazy in here – it’s getting noisy in here too, and we’re the only people we’ve got on the track there. So we’ve got Just pat each other on the back, sit in the group, talk about it and just stick together.”
Not too long ago, the Kings were the laughingstock of the NBA, owners of the longest postseason drought in North American sports. After their punishing, dominant, brutal 118-99 Game 6 victory over the Warriors on Friday, they are now one home win away from dethroning the champions and advancing to the Western Conference Semifinals.
A strong start was a focus for the Kings in Game 6, and they certainly took it to heart and shot out to an 8-0 lead. Even with the Warriors fighting back on the scoreboard, the energy of Chase Center fans was nervous, with a nagging suspicion that they might not be cheering for the better team.
“We were up two at the end of the first quarter, it didn’t feel great,” said Warriors head coach Steve Kerr after the game. “You could feel they got better shots than us, and they put more pressure on us defensively.”
What came out of that was an absolute masterclass on both ends of the floor. Listening to the Kings talk, it’s clear that Coach of the Year Mike Brown’s message has been received loud and clear about what to do: play fast, play physical, spray the ball to 3-point shooters. They did all that and more in a game where they held the mighty Warriors offense under 100 points, recording their worst home loss of the season.
Paint points, replay points, quick break points, 3-pointers, field goal attempts – essentially every meaningful category went in favor of the Kings in Game 6.
“We wanted to hit first, hit second, hit third, hit last, and I think we did that right tonight,” said Kings point guard De’Aaron Fox after the game. “Especially with our pace, I feel like we had the whole game under control tonight. From start to finish, I feel like this is probably the best game we’ve played this year.”
In their nightmares, the Warriors defenders will see a haunting, blurry image somewhat resembling Monk, who scored a team-high 28 points and went 9 of 10 from the free throw line. Ever the overall general, Fox had 26 points and 11 assists on 10-for-18 shooting with a broken index finger on his dominant left hand. Kevin Huerter, whose playing time had dwindled in every game of the series during a rough shooting slump, gave the Kings 29 tough minutes and finally broke the seal on the hoop with three grueling three-pointers.
Rookie Keegan Murray’s maturation over the six games of this series seems like a full six years as he played 45 minutes on Friday night and knocked down four 3-pointers on his way to 15 points and 12 massive rebounds. And despite an error in just 23 minutes with a left eye that resembled Rocky Balboa’sDomantas Sabonis amassed nine offensive rebounds—half of his team’s total of 18—to help Sacramento win possession.
In an elimination game on the home field of the team that has won the league four times in the past eight years, the largely inexperienced Kings broke out their best win of the year. Simply remarkable. They seemed like a different team than the one we saw in the last three games, but if you ask them, on Friday night we saw the Kings get back to themselves.
“We’ve had a great spirit. We’ve been responding all year. We’ve been responding all year,” Huerter said after the season-saving win. “Our attack has been dormant for most of the series, I think, and we just knew that if we could get back to ourselves, we could continue this series, and we did tonight. But our confidence never wavered.”
Emotionally, the Kings played with the necessary desperation and freedom of a team that had nothing to lose. But they also made some significant tactical changes, limiting the minutes of veteran Harrison Barnes and defense specialist Davion Mitchell in favor of more minutes for Huerter, plus the use of little-used guard Terence Davis to put as much shot and speed on the ground as possible. keep as possible. Their talents were enhanced by using six-foot-tall Trey Lyles as a backup center, where he scored a 12-point, 10-rebound double-double in 26 minutes while spreading the floor for Monk and Fox.
“It opened everything up for us,” Monk said of the small lineups. “We were able to spray, play and just hit shots, and that was great for us.”
The small-ball lineups — strongly defended by Kings analytics coach Robbie Lemons and assistant Luke Loucks until finally implemented by Brown — gave the Warriors attacks at both ends and were instrumental in ultimately putting the game out of reach in the fourth quarter. . Whenever it looked like Golden State would embark on one of its signature runs to come back from the dead, the Kings were there with a 3-pointer or a quick break layup.
The defense was stifling, one step ahead of any split play, backdoor opening, or weak sidescreen the Warriors attempted. It’s hard to remember even one open shot from the Warriors, who made just 38 percent of their field goals compared to the stellar looks the Kings repeatedly generated.
After the Kings’ incredible effort, the stage is set for a heavyweight bout of the highest order in Sunday’s Game 7 at Sacramento’s rambunctious Golden 1 Center. Seeing the version of the Warriors from Game 5 and the Kings who appeared for Game 6, we’re in for a finale befitting one of the most entertaining first-round series in recent history.
“I mean, every sports media person out there — and I’d do the same thing if I were in your guys’ shoes — but you know, they’re not giving us a chance. That’s fine,” Brown said. after Game 6. “Like I said, we have to earn it. Tonight I thought our guys deserved it well.
“But the job is not done yet. So we have to see how we are going to react as a group in a Game 7 for the first time.”
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