Kings-Warriors: Golden State ‘licking wounds’ after falling behind 2-0 in playoff series

The Beam Team has the defending champion Golden State Warriors in a place they’ve never been since Stephen Curry began shooting 3s in the Bay Area: down 2-0 in the playoffs.

“So now it’s a matter of going home and licking our wounds a little bit,” Warriors head coach Steve Kerr said Monday after the Kings beat the Warriors 114-106 at Golden 1 Center.

The physical contest was blighted by Draymond Green’s stomping on Domantas Sabonis after the two got tangled in the fourth quarter, while the Warriors contend Sabonis held on to Green’s ankle, leaving him little choice while trying to shake free.

“My leg got grabbed,” Green said. “Second time in two nights. Referees just watch it. I got to land my foot somewhere and I’m not the most flexible person, so (my leg’s) not stretching that far.”

Bigger picture, the Kings control the series, needing to win two more games with the scene shifting to San Francisco for Game 3 on Thursday. The Kings for the second straight game were better in crunch time, made fewer mistakes, scored more second-chance points, turned the ball over fewer times, and continued to play arguably their best defense of the season against Curry, Klay Thompson and Green.

“They played better than we did down the stretch,” Kerr continued. “They were more physical tonight. It was an incredibly physical game. Really, really — a lot of physicality, not much movement, not much freedom of movement out there. They were the aggressors and I thought they benefited from being the aggressors.”

A new Warriors challenge

Physicality is not something the Kings were known for during their regular season. Head coach Mike Brown would often list a lack of physicality atop his list of criticisms after losses, but their attention to that area has prevented the Warriors from getting going behind the 3-point line. Curry and Klay Thompson made eight of their 23 3-pointers, but the rest of the Warriors shot five of 17.

Monday marked another banner performance from point guard De’Aaron Fox, who scored 11 of his 24 points in the fourth quarter, while Sabonis bounced back from his rough outing in Game 1 with 24 points, nine rebounds and four assists on 8-of-12 shooting.

“They just made a couple more plays down the stretch in terms of putting pressure on our defense,” Curry said. “Fox got into the lane a couple times, forced us to make decisions on who we could give the shot up to.”

The Warriors came into the matchup with Sacramento having won a road game in 28 straight series. And the last time they fell behind 0-2 was while Curry was in college at Davidson. The “We Believe” Warriors were last down 0-2 in the conference semifinals against the Utah Jazz in 2007. They’ve never lost the first two games of a series since Curry has been in the NBA.

“That’s exciting, right?” Green said. “A new challenge. After the game, I was actually thinking about that — like ‘Man, this is one we haven’t seen yet.’ And we’ve conquered all the rest of them, so why not go conquer this one? It’d be a lot of fun. A lot of fun.”

Green credited the Kings for their play in the fourth quarter. The Kings made 10 of 19 field goals after shooting just 39% in the first half.

“They’ve put a lot of pressure on our defense,” Green said. “And they didn’t particularly shoot the well all night, but they made shots down the stretch. Gotta give those guys some credit, but there’s a lot of things we can clean up.”

Curry scored 30 and 28 in the first two games while combining to shoot 20 of 41, while mostly being hounded by Kings backup point guard Davion Mitchell and shooting guard Kevin Huerter, who was tasked with chasing Curry in a “box-and-one” defense.

Of course, Brown spent his last six seasons on the Warriors coaching staff and has an intricate knowledge of how Curry likes to get open. Kings defenders have worked to prevent Curry from getting loose away from the ball or relocate after his initial attempt to find an open shot isn’t there.

‘A long series’

“But it’s a long series,” Curry said. “We just gotta continue to make the right play. They’re obviously putting Mitchell out there, just telling him to guard 94 feet with bodies behind him. He’s giving great effort out there. So we still (need to) find ways to get into the lane, kicking out, finding shooters, trying to continue to put pressure on them. I think we could make a couple adjustments in terms of negating that pressure, and we’ll look at the film and figure out how to do that.”

Golden State has been down by two games during a series just once, during the 2016 Western Conference finals, when they came back from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Thunder led by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. They blew a 3-1 lead the following series versus the Cleveland Cavaliers in the NBA Finals.

Still, despite falling behind 2-0 and getting outplayed down the stretch in both games to open the series, the Warriors still believe there are reasons for optimism against Sacramento.

“Yeah, unfamiliar territory, but we’ve been down 3-1. We’ve been up 3-1,” Thompson said. “We’ve been through everything, so we rely on our experience. We’ll take a great off day tomorrow to recollect ourselves and do what we do, and that’s play well at home, always.”

Added Curry: “You gotta embrace it. If you do this as long as we have ... and we’ve never been in this situation, we gotta stay together, stay locked in on the things we need to do better, embrace the challenge of protecting home court, which we’ve done great all year.

“And at the end of the day, all we need to do is win one game here, somehow, some way. That’s the old saying, the series doesn’t start until somebody wins on the other team’s home floor. If we want to get ourselves back into it, it starts with a focused effort on Game 3 at home.”