Does Kings coach Mike Brown regret playing Davis over Mitchell in Curry’s 50-point game?

Kings coach Mike Brown doesn’t regret a decision that worked in Game 6 but appeared to backfire in a deciding Game 7 of Sacramento’s series against the Golden State Warriors.

That decision: Playing Terence Davis over defensive stalwart Davion Mitchell and having Davis serve as the primary defender on Stephen Curry, who scored 50 points in a 120-100 victory at Golden 1 Center to eliminate the Kings from the playoffs.

“(Davis) also played Game 6,” Brown said. “That was our best game of the series, was Game 6, and TD guarded Steph. We felt it gave Foxy (De’Aaron Fox) and Malik (Monk) a lot of room because TD was obviously a high-level shooter for us and could catch fire any time. And so going with him in Game 6 was something that I decided to do and it worked out well.”

To Brown’s point, Davis played strong defense against Curry when the Kings controlled Game 6 and avoided elimination with their impressive 118-99 victory at Chase Center to force Game 7. Curry shot just 9 of 21 and scored 29 points, while the Warriors were minus-16 points during his 36 minutes on the floor. Davis played 19:24 while Mitchell was given just over 11 minutes.

“And so going into Game 7, I was going to stay the course and give that another opportunity,” Brown said.

The results appeared promising. Sacramento took a 58-56 lead into halftime while Davis score nine points on three 3-pointers. Davis was a respectable 37% shooter from 3 on the year. Mitchell’s 32% clip was the worst among the team’s regular rotation players.

But the results of Brown’s decision flipped as the game wore on.

Curry scored 20 first-half points and sat for nearly all the time Mitchell was on the floor in the first and second quarters. Curry went on to score 30 points in the second half while Mitchell played just 2:45 in the third quarter and stayed on the bench throughout the fourth.

The Warriors in the second half outscored the Kings 64-42. The Kings only outscored Curry by 12. Brown after the game lamented the 13 offensive rebounds his team allowed, including seven from Kevon Looney, and the 11 second-chance points the Kings gave up while getting outscored by 12 in the third quarter.

Sacramento also missed 11 free throws, going just 16 of 27 from line in the 20-point loss.

“And like I said, I felt like it would have been great if we could have controlled the glass in Game 7, and also if we wouldn’t have shot 59% from the free-throw line,” Brown said. “It’s tough to miss double-digit free throws in a deciding Game 7 against the NBA champs.

“I know a lot of people have their own opinion, but in my opinion, those two areas that are controllable, we didn’t control, and that cost us the game more than anything else. Because if you look at the box score, Steph was the only one that scored and you can survive one guy getting his. There’s plenty of box scores in the playoffs that one guy got his because they’re elite players. But those other areas you got to clean up.”

Indeed, Curry shot 20 of 38 from the floor (53%) while his teammates combined to shoot 23 of 62 (37%). Yet while Davis was on the floor to give the offense more spacing than Mitchell, who shot 26% from 3-point range in the series, the Kings shot just 33% from the floor after halftime and went 3 of 22 from distance.