SACRAMENTO, Calif. — If only thought bubbles were above the heads of the two agonizing owners on Tuesday night at the Golden 1 Center.
On the right side of the TNT desk set up at center court, where Stan Van Gundy and Brian Anderson called the Kings’ 118-94 blowout of the Warriors that sparked chaos for one team and catharsis or the other, Sacramento owner Vivek Ranadivé sat in his black jogging pants and matching “Sac” jacket. Twelve chairs away, across from the Golden State bench where answers to the Kings’ suddenly stingy defense were nowhere to be found, Warriors owner Joe Lacob sported his jeans-and-a-sport-coat fit.
Ranadivé was stoic for most of the night, save for a few high-fives he shared with nearby friends as his team looked nothing like the group that had lost seven of its last 11 games coming in. Lacob, whose dying dynasty had shown such a strong pulse of late by posting the fourth-best record in the league since Jan. 30, was even more subdued.
It’s a (very) safe bet both men spent the evening pondering the sort of big-picture questions that require answers this time of year. That’s the beauty of the Play-In Tournament, with the finality of an all-or-nothing game demanding the stakes stare you right in the face.
But in the absence of clarity from either one of them, I’ll venture to hypothesize about the ruminations that likely crossed their respective minds. Everywhere you looked in this game, there was a development unfolding that came with some sort of deeper meaning …
Ah, sweet revenge on an old friend. (Ranadivé, probably.)
As postseason games go, it’s hard to imagine a No. 9 vs. No. 10 matchup having this sort of substance. They would both have been eliminated by now if Adam Silver hadn’t decided to make the Play-In Tournament a thing back in 2020 (and then going to its current format in 2021).
But Warriors versus Kings is just different. Not only because of the Northern California component, but because of the Big Brother-Little Brother dynamic that makes it so much more personal and, well, prickly. You have Harrison Barnes and his sordid history with the Warriors (and Draymond Green, more specifically). There’s the De’Aaron Fox–Steph Curry relationship that is less controversial but even more relevant, with the 26-year-old Kings point guard looking to knock the Warriors’ 36-year-old legend from his perch.
Fox came close a year ago, when Curry’s 50-point masterpiece in Game 7 sent the Kings into the offseason — and Fox, as it happened, into an Under Armour partnership with the Warriors point guard just a few months later. (Kids these days.) But truth be told, this dynamic starts at the top.
Ranadivé was a minority owner with the Warriors from 2010 to 2013. When he helped Sacramento save the Kings in 2013, becoming the majority owner after it seemed so certain the franchise would be relocated to Seattle, it was no secret the software magnate had grown tired of the lack of control that comes with the minority owner existence. Lacob, like all majority owners, had all of the power afforded to him by the league’s constitution and bylaws. If Ranadivé wanted to ever call the shots, he’d have to secure the top spot elsewhere.
Yet beyond those driving forces that put the 66-year-old on this Kings path, the Warriors theme of Ranadivé’s 11-year tenure with the Kings speaks volumes about his continued reverence for his old franchise. Four of the six Kings coaches who have been at the helm for more than half a season came from the Warriors (Michael Malone, Luke Walton, Alvin Gentry and current coach Mike Brown). Ranadivé’s general manager, Monte McNair, came from the same Houston Rockets organization widely regarded as the only group bold enough to challenge the Warriors during their storied run. (McNair worked under the Rockets’ then-president of basketball of operations Daryl Morey, who is now in Philadelphia.)
There’s no way all of this Warriors connective tissue is a coinkydink.
In the here and now, though, this Kings win mattered because Brown found a way to avoid a repeat fate that might have sent Ranadivé into the darkest of holes. Given his well-chronicled Warriors-centric ethos and the elevated expectations that came with the Kings’ surprise success a year ago, there’s no way of knowing how he might have reacted if Lacob and his Warriors danced on their graves again.
Instead, the hoops Grim Reaper went the other way. The Kings will have another Play-In challenge Friday night in New Orleans, where they’ll try to avoid going 0-6 against the Pelicans and advance to a first-round matchup against top-seeded Oklahoma City. And everyone, from Brown on down, is better off for it.
Captain Klay couldn’t hit water if he fell out of his boat. (Lacob, probably.)
What a brutal time for Klay Thompson to have the worst shooting night of his NBA life.
After a two-month stretch in which the future Hall of Famer had finally found his way again, adjusting to a sixth-man role before returning to his starting spot in the final few weeks, Thompson went 0-for-10 while missing all six of his 3-pointers. He now heads into free agency with this massive cloud hanging over his head. It’s honestly hard to find the words to describe this one.
Lacob’s most revealing reaction came when Thompson missed his final shot of the night midway through the fourth quarter. Thompson took a pass from Trayce Jackson-Davis on the right wing and fired the 3 just as the Kings’ Trey Lyles closed late.
“Here is Thompson,” Anderson said on the telecast. “Another miss…”
Lacob, with his hands crossed on his jeans, tilted his head to the right and seemed to sigh in the most understandable of ways.
The 34-year-old Thompson had never had a game in which he hit zero field goals while taking more than two attempts, let alone 10. And bear in mind, he has played in a combined 951 games (regular season and playoffs). So yes, it’s fair game to discuss the possibility this one performance might have changed the way Lacob sees Thompson’s situation when it comes time to negotiate this summer. The truth, at least for now, is there’s simply no way to know.
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As for the pulse on the situation before Thompson’s awful outing? Key Warriors stakeholders have been optimistic Thompson will re-sign, with the celebrated Curry-Thompson-Green trio remaining as young talents such as Jonathan Kuminga, Brandin Podziemski and Jackson-Davis provide hope for a brighter future ahead. All signs were pointing to this band getting back together.
There are market forces outside of their control, too, with teams like Orlando (which has as much as $60 million in salary cap space) playing the wild-card role. The Dallas Mavericks are worth watching as a possible suitor as well, league sources tell The Athletic. The Phoenix Suns’ decision to give Grayson Allen a four-year, $70 million extension on Monday also becomes a relevant data point, with Thompson’s camp sure to point out that a 28-year-old role player just landed a deal that pays him an average of $17.5 million annually. (This applies to Kings’ free-agent-to-be Malik Monk as well.)
As our Tim Kawakami wrote, the support for Thompson and his return remains strong among his coaches and fellow players. It remains to be seen if Lacob agrees.
So maybe Mike (Brown) was right about defense after all. (Ranadivé, probably.)
When Brown came up with his offseason plan last summer, his primary focus was the Kings’ woeful defense. Sacramento had posted the highest offensive rating in league history, but its inability to get stops when it mattered most was, in Brown’s mind, the reason they fell short against the Warriors last season.
“Can we get in the top 15 or top 10 defensively?” Brown, whose team was 24th in defensive rating last season, asked in an interview with The Athletic in October. “If we do, I truly believe we’ll be in a much better situation come playoff time.”
It wasn’t quite that simple, as the Kings’ fall to 13th in offensive rating this season undercut their efforts to improve the other end. And while they finished with the league’s 14th-best defensive rating, the fact that they finished with two fewer wins in the regular season — and must now continue to fight for their playoff lives in the Play-In — overshadowed the fact they had quietly become a more balanced team.
Until Tuesday night.
Their dominant defensive effort against Golden State was not as much of an outlier as a most likely suspect. The Kings had the league’s third-best defensive rating from March 1 until the end of the regular season (while going 13-11 in that span). The emergence of undrafted guard Keon Ellis into a starting role was a major factor, as was the increased time for third-year guard Davion Mitchell that was born out of necessity after Monk’s MCL sprain in late March. Fox increased his defensive commitment and tied with Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for the league lead in steals at two per game. Second-year forward Keegan Murray has become a versatile and reliable defender as well.
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As our Anthony Slater pointed out in his preview for this Kings-Warriors affair, this sort of defensive showing is no small thing in Sacramento. During the Kings’ league-long 16-year playoff drought that was finally broken last season, they never ranked higher than 19th in points allowed per 100 possessions and were in the bottom five eight times.
But this — a do-or-die game in which the Warriors were held to a season low in points while committing 16 turnovers — was precisely the kind of performance Brown had in mind when he took his team down this road.
“I think this is the best defensive game we’ve ever had, honestly,” Mitchell said afterward. “Honestly. I mean, we (were) on a string helping one another. Our blitz was really good on Steph (who had 22 points, two assists, two steals, six turnovers and a minus-21 rating). Keon did an amazing job on Steph throughout the game, putting pressure on him, making him frustrated. Keegan did too. And we just did a really good job.”
(Top photo: Rocky Widner / NBAE via Getty Images)
