Kings-Warriors preview: Mike Brown optimistic shooting struggles will end in pivotal Game 4
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Sacramento Kings in the Playoffs
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A team that had one of the best statistical offenses in NBA history during the regular season isn’t enjoying the same success in the playoffs and the Kings are hoping to recapture their collective shooting touch in Sunday’s pivotal Game 4 against the Golden State Warriors.
Head coach Mike Brown’s message to the team remains the same as it was during the regular season.
“Keep shooting, keep shooting,” Brown said Friday, a day after the Kings fell 114-97 in Game 3 against the Warriors in San Francisco. “We want to let that thing fly and we’ll live with the results. We’re a good shooting team. These guys can shoot.”
The Kings lead the series 2-1, but they haven’t shot well in their three games against the Warriors. They hit just 38% of their shots in Game 3 after combining to shoot 45.3% in their two wins to open the series. Sacramento during the regular season was second in the NBA, making 49.4% of its field goals — and the team currently ranks 14th of 16 playoff teams in shooting percentage at 42.9%.
“We’re executing the game plan,” reserve forward Trey Lyles said. “We watched film this morning. We got a lot of open looks. We just gotta start making them, and that’s gonna happen so we’re not really worried about that because we’re getting the shots and the shot selection that we want.”
The talk from Brown and his players after Thursday’s loss was mostly around physicality and the hustle stats. The Kings said the Warriors were the more aggressive team after Sacramento took the fight to the defending champions in the first two games of the series. The Warriors controlled the offensive glass Thursday by getting 18 offensive rebounds and scoring 24 second-chance points.
But Sacramento’s shooting has been a more confounding issue, particularly since the Kings have gotten open looks. The Kings had a 58% effective field-goal rate in the regular season with defenders six or more feet away. That number has dropped to 41.6% in the Golden State series.
“It’s easy to say we didn’t make shots, but we didn’t,” Kings guard Kevin Huerter said.
The Warriors have emphasized taking away dribble hand-offs from Domantas Sabonis that led to a slew of 3-point shots for Huerter and rookie Keegan Murray during the regular season. That has forced the Kings to try to get their 3-point looks differently, which the team is still adjusting to.
“I think in a lot of ways, it’s the rhythm of our offense,” Huerter said. “They’ve done a good job of taking away a lot of the movement and the flow and the rhythm of what we do. And so, the 3s are open, but they’re not the ones were accustomed to getting in the flow of our offense. Credit to them. It’s something that they watched film on, and right from Game 1, trying to take us out of a lot of our movement and off-ball cutting, and the 3s that we’re accustomed to getting in the flow of our offense that they’ve taken away.”
Sabonis averaged a team-leading 7.3 assists in the regular season, but he’s totaled just 10 in three playoff games. The Kings were the second most efficient team in dribble hand-offs during the regular season, averaging 1.07 points per possession, but that number has fallen to 0.59 points per possession in the postseason.
Huerter, Sabonis’ most prominent dribble hand-off partner, and Murray have combined to make just 4 of 28 (14%) from 3-point range after both shot better than 40% on the season while combining for more than five made 3s per game on average.
Huerter said there are things the team’s shooters can do to help Sabonis and open things up for the rest of the offense to get better shots in rhythm.
“We have to,” Huerter said. “Domas all year has done a great job of getting everybody else open, making everybody else’s lives easier. And right now, just for us, cutting a little bit harder for him, being more physical at the point of attack, setting screens to get him open, getting to the right spots so, when he is (going) one on one, he has the right outlets to get to if he needs them. But of course we could be better for him.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
