Kings coach Mike Brown has no regrets about taking late timeout in Game 4 loss to Warriors
Kings coach Mike Brown initially second-guessed himself for calling a timeout ahead of his team’s final possession in Sunday’s pivotal Game 4 loss to the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center in San Francisco.
But that notion didn’t last long, and his decision was reinforced after digesting the game 48 hours later.
“The reason why I didn’t (regret the decision), and I don’t, especially after watching the film, I don’t know if you guys recall how bad we were in transition in the fourth quarter,” Brown said after practice in Sacramento on Tuesday.
“Not just missing shots at the rim — taking crazy shots at the rim. So that was one thing that went through my mind.”
Indeed, Brown could have let it ride with 10.5 seconds remaining when Keegan Murray grabbed a rebound off a missed Stephen Curry push shot from the free-throw line with the Kings trailing 126-125. But he decided to call a timeout to gather his team.
The result: a 28-foot 3-point shot from Harrison Barnes from the left-wing with 1.1 seconds remaining, after a pass from De’Aaron Fox, that clanked off the back rim, ending the Kings’ attempt at a comeback after entering the fourth quarter down 10 points. Golden State evened the series at two games apiece ahead of Wednesday’s Game 5 at Golden 1 Center.
Brown cited his team’s five turnovers in the fourth quarter while the Kings looked like the more inexperienced group down the stretch.
To Brown’s point, the Kings’ offense was chaotic in transition throughout the fourth quarter. Some of the issues: Murray missed a layup, Malik Monk lost possession on a drive giving the ball right to Curry, Monk tried a frantic pass to Barnes — hitting off a defender and off the back board — and Domantas Sabonis had the ball stolen by Draymond Green despite the Kings having a five-on-four scenario when Andrew Wiggins was slow to get back down the court after trying for an offensive rebound.
And there was a miscommunication between Fox, Barnes and a cutting Sabonis on a pass that went from Fox out of bounds between the two. And an out-of-control Monk layup attempt early in the shot clock that didn’t come close with 49 seconds remaining and the Kings down five.
“The second thing that went through my mind,” Brown said, “when I saw Keegan get the rebound, it’s a little different if Foxy gets the rebound and starts to go, maybe I pull back (from calling timeout). But what really made me 100% okay with taking it, as bad as we were in transition in the fourth, if you go back and watch the film, when Foxy got it and was ahead of the pack, the rest of our guys were behind, so it would have been a one-on-four situation, so who knows what would have happened.
“I didn’t have the confidence in our group, especially the way we played in transition in the fourth quarter, to let it go. Nine times out of 10, I let it go, just because you don’t want the defense to get a chance to get set. Having said that, I don’t know if we could have gotten a better look in that situation.”
Brown echoed what he and the team said after the game about the quality of Barnes’ look at a game-winning 3 against his former team. The plan was to get the ball in the hands of Fox, the NBA’s leading scorer in clutch situations and winner of the league’s first ever Clutch Player of the Year award.
“We had talked about it (calling a timeout),” Fox said Tuesday. “We weren’t good in transition last game. So no (regrets). Obviously, at times you want to get going, but as a team we weren’t good in transition last game.”
The Kings for the game had 16 shot attempts coming in transition situations, but they made just seven. The Warriors hit 6 of 9 in transition. The Kings finished the game with 10 turnovers, with half coming in the final frame.
Which could speak to the Kings’ inexperience as well as their emphasis on pushing the pace as often as possible. The Kings are in a four-way tie with the Warriors, Celtics and Hawks, averaging 104 possessions per game in the playoffs.
The balance between playing with pace and playing under control is one that’s only found through experience, Brown said.
“It’s like I told them during film,” Brown said. “I could sit up here and talk about it, but they gotta feel it and go through it and try to figure it out. It ain’t easy. But the playoffs against the defending champions, that ain’t supposed to be easy. And I promise you this, if we say ‘slow it down,’ we’re going to get hammered if we try to play a walk-it-up executing game against these guys. We got to run, run, run, run, because that’s what our strength is. And we’re going to get better as we go along and we’re going to grow, win or lose, during this situation.”
