Kings 104, Warriors 130
Around this time of year, it is do or die time in the NBA. Golden State and Sacramento, two regional rivals, with many heated battles over the last couple of years, faced off again Thursday night in a TNT game for their final regular season faceoff. The Dubs came into tonight’s match-up tied with Minnesota for sixth place in the West while the Kings started the evening slotted firmly in the ninth spot. Both teams hold aspirations of reaching a higher seeding before the regular season finishes up to position themselves well for post-season play. The increased stakes added to the usual drama and intensity these two northern California rivals usually provide.
The Kings started the game off with some porous defense, giving up three straight open corner threes. Sacramento was careless with the ball early, giving up turnovers from a multitude of players, and totaling five turnovers in just the first six minutes of the game. This was a recurring flaw I had assumed Sacramento had gotten over, but clearly they haven’t – at least not in the first quarter of games! These bad giveaways combined with too many easy looks for Golden State produced a quick 17-6 lead for the Bay Area team. It appeared the gameplan was to give Draymond Green open threes, and he certainly took that to heart, knocking down a handful of them in the first quarter. Green ended up with a season-high 23 points, including converting on 4 of his 7 three point attempts, on the night. The Kings ended the quarter trailing the Warriors 30-18, and that scoreline felt generous considering how poorly they played compared to Golden State.
The Warriors continued to stay hot from three in the second quarter. Sacramento started to contest the threes of their “non-shooters” like Green and Gary Payton, but it didn’t matter at that point. The Kings’ offense, on the other hand, looked aimless for much of the first half. Without a true point guard and no Sabonis, the obvious lack of a true initiator and playmaker clearly hurt the Kings. Guys like Zach LaVine and Malik Monk often look better as secondary playmakers rather than primary playmakers. As a result, turnovers were up, the offense didn’t click, and good looks were tough to come by. The game looked just about over as we neared halftime, but the team rallied and put up a 17-4 run just before the half. The Warriors got loose with the ball and allowed the Kings back into the game. The Kings run narrowed the Golden State lead to 61-51 at halftime.
In an interesting twist, Doug Christie opted to start Trey Lyles at the center spot over Jonas Valanciunas. Lyles played a nice role in the Kings late second half run and showed that he was a better matchup against Green in that stint. Without Domantas Sabonis available, Christie was willing to test things out at the five spot tonight. The Kings defense from the late second quarter carried over with Lyles in the third quarter lineup. Sacramento put multiple stops together and cut the deficit to just 6 points quicker than you could blink. The two Cali teams battled back and forth trading three pointers between each other, including Steph Curry’s 4000th three pointer of his career. Curry himself had a quiet night with just 11 points, but his teammates were able to pick up the slack.
Golden State maintained about a 10 point lead for most of the quarter as the Kings hung around in large part due to their ability to draw fouls. The offensive flow seemed to come to a halt again as the Kings slightly lost the non-Curry minutes in the third period and headed into the fourth quarter down 13.
In a recurring theme on the night, Sacramento got torn up on defense to start the fourth quarter. They tried a mix of zone and man defensive coverage, but neither one was able to slow down the veteran Warriors. The communication on that end of the floor has gotten better since the trades, but it was lacking on multiple occasions tonight. The sputtering start to the fourth quarter cost the Kings, as the Warriors never looked back from that point on. The Warriors cruised to victory, finishing the Kings off by a score of 104 to 130.
This was yet another loss in a series of disappointing losses. Many of the Kings recent wins came against sub-.500 teams and they have rarely been competitive against teams with winning records. Not a good sign for a team with a schedule consisting of almost only good to great teams. Tomorrow night’s game against Phoenix is not a must-win in the literal sense. However, if they want to get some momentum going again and start to feel good about themselves, they have to pull out a victory against the underperforming Phoenix team who are peering over the Kings shoulders in the standings.
Kings Scribe 
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