The Sacramento Kings completely outplayed the Golden State Warriors in Friday night’s Game 6, winning 118-99, to force a deciding seventh match in their Western Conference first-round series. Despite Warriors coach Steve Kerr warning his team to be ready for a different level of play from the Kings, his team was somehow caught off guard. “I don’t think (we were ready),” Klay Thompson said. “We just had a lot of kind of mental errors, and they took advantage of it and grabbed momentum early.” Sacramento dominated both on the scoreboard and the stat board, outscoring Golden State 30-16 in the paint, shooting 40.7% from the field, and grabbing 32 rebounds, 11 of which were offensive boards.
Although Stephen Curry finished with 29 points and Thompson with 22, the rest of the team had only 22. Curry said, “I don’t know if that was an energy thing or a focus thing, or whatever it was, but you have to be able to learn those lessons quickly.” Despite the loss, the Warriors are confident that they can respond in Game 7. “We’ve had plenty of bad losses on this dynastic run we’ve been on,” Thompson said. “But this is not the fourth loss of a series. This is a third and it’s first to four. We are right there.”
Sacramento Kings veteran Malik Monk motivated his teammates before the game, telling them not to have any regrets and to leave it all on the floor. Harrison Barnes urged the team to bring the series back to Sacramento. Sacramento’s De’Aaron Fox scored 26 points on 10-of-18 shooting and had 11 assists. He scored or assisted on 56 of Sacramento’s points. The Kings’ game plan was to go small, opening up the floor and leaving the Warriors without answers. Kerr said, “So they had more space to work with, and we did not respond very well. Our defense was not very sound, you know, during some of those stretches. So we’ll watch the tape and figure out what we can do better.”
