Getty Harrison Barnes takes the ball to the basket during a 2021 bout between the Sacramento Kings and the Golden State Warriors.
The stakes are about as high as they could possibly be for the Golden State Warriors‘ upcoming playoff series against their NorCal rivals, the Sacramento Kings. Although the Dubs’ title defense left a lot to be desired during the regular season (and an air of uncertainty still lingers) the team finally looks to have all of its pieces in place for a possible run at the repeat.
Meanwhile, the Kings are in the postseason for the first time since Mike Bibby was still setting the hardwood ablaze at ARCO. Not only that, they’re the favorites in the unlikely first-round matchup.
For his part, Kings insider James Ham of 1320 ESPN in Sacramento — who has spent time on the beat for both clubs over the years — believes that Mike Brown’s squad is bringing something to the series the likes of which Golden State has never seen before throughout its run.
Namely, an offensive attack that he believes is even better than that of the historically-potent, mid-dynasty Warriors.
“We talk about how great this Warriors run has been and I covered it for many years… I was in locker rooms when they won. So, I know how great they are. I’ll tell you, the Warriors offense has always been incredible — they never did what the Kings did this year,” Ham said on 95.7 The Game’s Steiny & Guru on Monday.
“The Kings’ offense this year was better than the Warriors offense in any of their great years, and that’s saying something.”
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The very notion that a team led by Domantas Sabonis, De’Aaron Fox and ex-Warrior Harrison Barnes could even be mentioned in the same breath as the Steph-Klay-Dray-KD Dubs feels like a blasphemy of the highest order. Thing is — many of the numbers actually back the concept as reality.
Over the course of the Warriors’ dynastic run, their greatest offensive output came during the 2018-19 campaign when they put 115.0 points per 100 possessions down on their opponents. This season, though, the Kings’ league-leading point production checked in at a whopping 118.4 points per 100 possessions.
For the record, that’s also the best mark in NBA history. Meanwhile, Sacramento also posted the greatest two-point conversion rate (58.6%) in the annals of the Association, the No. 2 true shooting percentage (60.8) and the No. 12 raw points per game average (120.7).
Still, Ham doesn’t know for sure whether the Kings will be able to fully replicate that level of efficiency during the playoffs.
“Whether it translates to the postseason, we’ll have to see… just because the Kings haven’t been there before. But they’re such a finely-oiled machine on the offensive end and it’s really wild because most of the rotation is new… I’m excited to see what they look like in year two, year three of this group being together.
“I think that they can go in and they can play and we’ll have to see whether that means they can beat, like, one of the great dynasties in the history of the game. But I’m not going to count them out before it starts.”
Warriors Given Middling Mark in B/R Report Card
Bleacher Report’s Andy Bailey just dropped his final grades for each of the league’s 30 teams now that the regular season is officially on the books. And, unsurprisingly, the 44-38 Warriors received a middling C-grade for their efforts.
Wrote Bailey:
The Golden State Warriors had one of the strangest and most difficult to explain home-and-road splits in recent memory. They went 33-8 at the Chase Center, while going a dismal 11-30 away from their friendly confines.
That alone makes it tough to give the Warriors any better than a C, but overestimating a young core that included James Wiseman (now a Detroit Piston), Moses Moody, Jonathan Kuminga and Jordan Poole (who had a way-below-average effective field-goal percentage) didn’t help either.