The Warriors dropped Game 1 of their first-round NBA playoff series against the Sacramento Kings on Saturday night, and less than three hours later, Draymond Green dissected where his team went wrong.
One of the most prominent reasons was the problem that Kings star guard De’Aaron Fox presented in his NBA playoff debut, particularly in the fourth quarter — where he has shined all season.
“De’Aaron Fox finished the game with 38 [points] and five assists. We definitely have to do better on Fox,” Green said on “The Draymond Green Show” on Saturday night. “He had [four] threes, and that wasn’t really expected but he shot the ball well. I remember having him on the show and he said he needed to take the shot more. He took them tonight and he knocked them down. You gotta live with that, you gotta give up something.
“Next game, you want to make it a little tougher on him if you can. In making a game plan, there are things that you live with and things that you won’t. And what you can’t live with is De’Aaron Fox being a one-man fastbreak, you can’t live with him getting to the paint every possession, those are tough things to deal with.”
Fox’s 38 points came from 13-of-27 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 shooting from beyond the arc. While it took him some time to adjust to his first postseason atmosphere, he was looking just like himself in the quarter that has earned him the “Fourth-quarter Fox” moniker.
The 25-year-old had 15 points and three of his five assists in the fourth quarter alone.
He and his Kentucky-turned-Kings teammate Malik Monk, who also played in his first NBA playoff game, put on a show together. And Monk wasn’t the only one who brought the energy off the bench.
“Malik Monk had a game off the bench, 32 points,” Green said. “De’aaron Fox may get 38 points and he’s obviously more than capable, if he didn’t do it tonight, of getting 38 points. But you can’t give up 32 to Malik Monk off the bench. Now, Malik’s an incredible player, he was 2-of-4 from the 3-point line, but he got downhill and put a lot of pressure on our defense. He shot 14 free throws, he was 14-of-14 from the line.
“You might’ve saw me talking to him on those last couple of free throws, I was like, ‘Man you owe us one, you passed your percentage now, I think the numbers got to play out, you owe us one.’ He knocked them down. But he had a big game. Trey Lyles also had a big game off the bench. He had 17 points off the bench. So there it is right there. You give up 49 points off the bench to two guys, it’s hard to overcome that.”
Lyles, who averaged 7.6 points this season, was a game-changer for Sacramento. In a game where the Kings didn’t shoot the 3-ball well, he was 4 of 6 from 3-point range and 6 of 8 from the field, with six rebounds and an assist.
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A third and final area where Green feels the Warriors must improve is on the glass, especially when it results in second-chance points for Sacramento.
“Seventeen offensive rebounds,” Green said. “Their offense, when nobody had anything going for them, what kept them in the game was their offensive rebounds. … That’s something we know we have to clean up. We’re a team capable of rebounding when we lock in on that.
“And it’s going to be a five-man effort. They’re crashing the boards from the corner, from the top, they’re sending everybody to the glass. So it’s going to be a five-man effort. We didn’t do a good job of that tonight. Ultimately, it ended up costing us the game.”
The Warriors lost 126-123. They’ll get a chance to bounce back on Monday in Game 2 at Golden 1 Center, and Green already has ideas on how to do just that.
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