caught my breath, time for a long winded game 1 rundown.
I’m glad some of my keys from the series thread turned out to be glaring in game 1.
The two major advantages I expected the Kings to have is rebounding and points in the paint. Kings won both handily despite leaving a lot off the score with Domas rough night finishing at the hoop.
Also, the X-factor was winning the bench battle and exactly the two guys I expected to have big game 1’s and overall I expect to have big series. Malik and Trey.
Len and Davion also both had strong games.
Warriors bench also played well, but the key is taking out Jordan Poole.
Wiggins is going to give us problems. He’s a tough matchup but I think we can limit Poole. We did in the second half and it was huge. He’s the target. The guy Kings need to take out of the game. We also have to make sure Kuminga and Payton don’t put together above average games offensively to cover for it.
They’ll sag off Domas all series long unless he starts knocking down a bunch of threes. I’m not worried about it. He really was just missing a lot of easy shots tonight. It wasn’t a good game but could’ve easily been a 20-16 bad game and the Kings win by a decent margin, who knows?. I’m not worried about it. 5-17 is abnormal for him. Looney and Green deserve a lot of credit but that’s just simply not going to happen very often.
I’m also not worried about Huerter. He got a lot of the looks we normally get him and at the same quantity. He just missed them. I thought he stuck with Klay very will in the final few minutes of the game.
HB had a sneaky solid game in the end. Strong first quarter and fourth quarter.
Keegan also had some good looks
Kings manufactured an explosive offensive game on arrhythmic 18 team assists. We’ll see what they accomplish when they hit a rhythm.
You can argue the Kings “escaped” this game but what I saw was a team that was taken mostly out of their game for nearly 3 quarters finding a way to win against a Warriors team that was playing in a good rhythm, getting good balance, having a hot 4th quarter by Steph and Klay, and a team that mostly executed their game plan by their own admission.
Kings are the team to make adjustments up 1-0. The Warriors did what they wanted to do…and lost.
Also, shout out to Sacramento and the organizations. Everybody, including me(and the players) thought Warriors fans would occupy atleast 30 percent of the arena. Not even close. They might as well have been an east coast team coming to Sac.
My heart rate in the fourth quarter was insane. I had to chill myself out and remind myself it was only game 1 after the broadcast showed a replay that blurred out at the end(it was because of the broadcast not me) and I thought I was having a heart attack or something before they went back to the live game and it was clear.
anyway, good win