SACRAMENTO – After six days of scrutiny and dissection, deep analytical deliberation and deeper statistical analysis, the bald truth about this Warriors-Kings first-round series is that only one team is on the clock.
That would, of course, be the defiantly aging Warriors.
The Kings are playoff pups, paws lining up for the first week of what could be four or five or six interesting years. They’re underdogs without playoff pedigree. Little is known, even less expected.
The Warriors are, however, approaching the edge of extinction in their present incarnation. Their core – Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson – averages a shade under 34 years of age. If the Warriors advance, and are impressive, it’s because their championship heart continues to beat. And because, well, they played the Kings.
If the Warriors lose? Cue the requiem.
That’s why this series between the No. 3 seed (Kings) and No. 6 seed (Warriors) is so compelling. The NBA masses are wondering if, in fact, the Warriors, after a 44-38 regular season, are finished now, rather than after another year or two.
Counting them out is risky, according to Draymond.
“I feel a totally different energy now that the regular season is over,” Green said this week. “Some of the issues we had in the regular season, they just don’t go away; you still have to correct them. But the focus level for the playoffs is totally different. The preparation is totally different. You lean into that a little more. You lean into the know-how. You know what to do.
“A lot of these teams don’t know how. When you can lean into that and be confident in that, it’s an added bonus.”
The Warriors had 82 games to correct those issues and were unable to consistently do so. There were numerous occasions during the regular season when it appeared, months after winning their fourth championship in eight seasons, that they were in full regression. They went seven weeks between road victories. They were victims of home-road sweeps by not one, not two, but three lottery-bound teams: Detroit, Indiana and Orlando.
A few days after declaring themselves in playoff mode, the Warriors gave away a home game to a team (Minnesota) attached to them in the conference standings.
The Warriors, with their 11-30 road record, were about as feeble and unsteady as any defending champions in NBA’s 76-year history.
And yet, after wheezing through season, here they are. They kept at it, finally summoning enough strength to climb the fence and drop into the postseason, aka, their backyard.
“I like where we are,” coach Steve Kerr told NBC Sports Bay Area this week. “We’re playing our best basketball. We’re getting as healthy as we’ve been all season. (Andrew) Wiggins is coming back. We’ve got Gary (Payton II), who we didn’t have until a couple weeks ago. Our defense has been all over the place, really solid at time and just awful at times. Those two guys have shown they can make a difference.
“They were a big part of why we won a championship. For a lot of the season, we weren’t sure what we’d get from different guys and different lineups. We know what we’re getting with Wiggs and Gary.”
This is Kerr’s way of saying the league has not seen the Warriors they will see beginning Saturday at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento. The starting five will be back, perhaps as soon as Saturday but surely sometime during this series. The attitude during practice this week was, according to players and coaches, the proper blend of joy and concentration.
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That was something that came and went, without rhyme or rhythm, during the regular season. The belief is that the Warriors are not so much flipping a switch as tightening their loose ends, of which there were many.
“Some games we didn’t bring it,” Wiggins told NBC Sports Bay Area. “The sense of urgency wasn’t there against certain teams. We played a certain way against high-level teams and then against other teams we sometimes would take our foot off the gas and let up. You can get hurt that way.
“But when it comes to playoff basketball, you’ve really got to lock in. I feel like we’re going to do that. All that stuff before, it doesn’t really matter. It’s like a new season now.”
The new season begins Saturday. The league might be curious to see if the Kings are ready to matter once again, but what really captivates is whether the Warriors matter as much as they did not so long ago.
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