FOX Sports writers are providing takeaways from games throughout the NBA playoffs. Here are their thoughts from the first Sunday of the postseason.
Kings 114, Warriors 106: Kings keep composure, take 2-0 lead
Coming out of the longest, darkest playoff drought in professional sports, it was fair to wonder if facing the defending champion Golden State Warriors in the hot, white glare of the postseason might be too much for the Sacramento Kings.
Not so far. The Kings were stepped on — literally — and, undaunted, stepped up for a 114-106 win to take a 2-0 lead in their best-of-seven first-round series.
The turning point came when Warriors forward Draymond Green pivoted on the rib cage of Kings forward Domantas Sabonis with 7:03 left in the fourth quarter. The two collided fighting for a rebound under the Sacramento basket with the Kings leading, 91-87. Sabonis fell at Green’s feet and curled his arm around Green’s ankle. Green, turning up court, then stepped on Sabonis with his full weight. After a review of the play, the referees assessed Sabonis a technical foul and ejected Green with a flagrant two. Green said afterward he was “not flexible enough” to have stepped over the fallen King and complained that this was the second game in a row a fallen Sacramento player grabbed his ankle, Malik Monk having done it in Game 1.
With Green in the locker room, the Warriors looked to their Splash Brothers, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, to still salvage a victory and they came close. But Curry’s 13 points in the final period and back-to-back 3s by Thompson never were enough to put the Warriors ahead, as the Kings kept them at bay by committee, with five different players all scoring at least three points in the final seven minutes.
While the stars for both teams shined — De’Aaron Fox and Sabonis both had 24 for the Kings, while Golden State’s Curry-Thompson-Andrew Wiggins trio combined for 71 — the glaring difference was in their supporting casts. Gary Payton II was the only notable contributor off the Warriors’ bench, delivering 13 points and six rebounds, while Monk and Davion Mitchell were part of the rotation guarding Curry and combined for 32 points, six assists and only one turnover.
After struggling to stay around .500 for most of the season, despite Steph Curry’s continued brilliance, the question was whether the Warriors would find reinforcements to bolster their chance of one more championship run or stick with their young lottery-pick bench brigade of Jonathan Kuminga, Moses Moody and James Wiseman. They opted to deal Wiseman to the Detroit Pistons for a handful of second-round picks in what was essentially a cost-saving move, and then flipped a couple of those picks to the Portland Trail Blazers to reacquire Payton.
The Warriors have to be second-guessing that decision after the first two games of this series. Kuminga played four scoreless minutes in Game 2. Moody played eight-and-a-half minutes, providing four points but also committing two fouls early in the fourth quarter that helped put the Kings in the bonus with more than 10 minutes to play.
Role players generally play better at home, though, and the series now heads to the Chase Center, where the Warriors have been nearly invincible. The Kings put a stop to 16 years of missing the playoffs. Now they have a chance to end a streak of 16 losses to the Warriors in the Bay Area when Curry is on the court.
Will the lights be any brighter down south? How much will they miss their vaunted purple beam? We’re about to find out.
— Ric Bucher
76ers 96, Nets 84: Sixers have a Harden problem
The Sixers beat the Nets on Monday night, 96-84. It wasn’t a pretty win, but it was a convincing one. The Nets are undersized and undermanned, and they know it, too. It’s why they junked up the game by throwing all sorts of traps and double teams at Joel Embiid and pushing the pace whenever they could.
The Nets gave an admirable effort but in the end, the Sixers, after a pair of home games, are exactly where they should be and where we thought they’d be: Up 2-0 and on their way to a second-round matchup with the Boston Celtics.
So all is good in Philly, right? Well, not exactly. Because the Sixers right now have a major problem on their hands: James Harden once again looks like he’s playing in mud.
Harden’s Game 1 numbers were great (23 points, 7-for-13 from deep, 13 assists), but his trademark burst and explosiveness were nowhere to be found. He missed seven of his eight shots in the paint and didn’t attempt a single free-throw.
In Game 2, Harden once again failed to generate anything off of drives, and this time, his jumper failed him. He finished with just eight points and seven assists. He missed 10 of his 13 shots. He turned the ball over five times. Once again, he did not attempt a single free-throw.
All this is eerily reminiscent of Harden’s performance in last year’s playoff run, when he disappeared down the stretch. In the months since, Harden, people close to him, and the people within the Sixers organization have been adamant that Harden’s struggles against the Heat were simply the result of him recovering from a balky hamstring which left him limited — that now he was healthy and that in this year’s playoffs, we’d once again see Harden on the attack.
And for most of the regular season, Harden was fantastic. He led the league in assists and was part of the league’s top pick-and-roll tandem. No, he wasn’t the same player we’d seen run circles around opponents while in Houston. But he was playing at an All-NBA level. And with that version of James Harden, the Sixers had a title chance.
But considering just a few weeks ago Harden told reporters that he had an Achilles problem that “has been bothering me for some months,” it’d be understandable if the Sixers and their fans started growing concerned. Because in about a week, the Sixers will be facing a big, strong, long, rangy and cohesive defense that won’t need to resort to junk schemes. And if Harden isn’t turning the corner or getting downhill or generating easy points, he and the Sixers have no shot.
— Yaron Weitzman
Yaron Weitzman is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. He is the author of “Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports.” Follow him on Twitter @YaronWeitzman.
Ric Bucher is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. He previously wrote for Bleacher Report, ESPN The Magazine and The Washington Post and has written two books, “Rebound,” on NBA forward Brian Grant’s battle with young onset Parkinson’s, and “Yao: A Life In Two Worlds.” He also has a daily podcast, “On The Ball with Ric Bucher.” Follow him on Twitter @RicBucher.
Get more from National Basketball Association Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
