Steph Curry & Warriors stunned by De'Aaron Fox & Kings to force Game 7 | Hoops Tonight

All right, welcome to Hoops Tonight here at The Volume. Happy Friday, everybody. Our first show of the day, we're going to be covering just the Kings going into Golden State shockingly and kind of dominating the Golden State Warriors to even the series at three. Round one coverage of the NBA playoffs here at Hoops Tonight is brought to you by Chase Freedom Unlimited. How do you cash back? We're going to be hitting this game just for about 10 minutes here, and then we're going to be coming back after Lakers-Grizzlies to cover that game as well. You guys know the drill. Before we get started, subscribe to The Volume's YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JasonLT. And if for whatever reason you guys miss one of these videos and you can't get back over to YouTube to finish, don't forget you can find them wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops Tonight. All right, let's talk some basketball. So this game kind of reminded me of the early road games in Sacramento to start the series. I want to give some credit to Sacramento first, most importantly just for their approach to this game. They were 0-4 in Chase Center this season. They lost there twice early in the regular season, and then they lost there twice during this series once a blowout in game three. And then game four, I know Harrison Barnes had that look at the end, but I mean, really when we dive into it, there was that weird Steph timeout. There were some turnovers. The Warriors were several possessions ahead of them and just happened to trick that game into position where Harrison Barnes had a look. So they've pretty much dominated the series ever since that 2-0 deficit. Now, essentially what got them beat in the first two games, if you guys remember when I would do the breakdowns from those games, I talked a lot about perimeter defense and dribble penetration leading to shot quality. Shot quality is a tough thing to focus too heavily on with the Warriors because they specialize in making tough shots. They've got two of the best pull-up jump shooters in the history of the league in Klay Thompson and Steph Curry. Klay, a little bit more of a movement shooter, but he hit some stuff off the bounce as well. Steph is probably the best pull-up jump shooter to ever play in the history of the league, and they just would go over drop coverage and knock down crazy shots. They won a championship doing it last year. Game four, down 2-1 against Boston. Steph just made difficult shot after difficult shot after difficult shot. That's what they do. So you can't focus too much on shot quality for the Warriors. If they just get a bunch of wide open looks, you're just going to lose. You're going to lose by 40 if you just give Steph, Klay, and all them driving kick looks all game long. You expect them to take and make tough shots. But on the other end of the floor, the Warriors do have to force teams into difficult shots. In the first two games, I told you guys I thought the Kings were getting higher quality shots because of dribble penetration. There's a huge difference between flattening out drives and straight line drives. When you have a straight line drive, it engages the help defense in a way that goes above and beyond the way that a flattened out drive will engage help defense. When Malik Monk goes flying down the lane, it forces a guy like Steph to come out of the corner to help, which is going to leave De'Aaron Fox wide open on the wing. However, if you flatten out that Malik Monk drive and make him kind of take a banana route, and you're kind of engaged on his hip, now Steph can maybe just dig at the ball or stay home entirely. And that forces Malik Monk to either take a contested shot over the top or to try to throw a pass to a player that's being guarded, which can lead to turnovers. Perimeter defense is not only the best form of rim protection that there is, but it is the best way to force turnovers because it allows your other defenders to stay in passing lanes. In the first half, it was very effort related. I thought the Warriors brought an incredibly poor level of effort and execution in the first half. They'd get a basket and De'Aaron Fox would just dribble all around them all the way down the floor and lay the ball in. Just easy transition pushes with no resistance for easy baskets at the rim. Then in the second half, the Warriors did pick up the effort a little bit, but they just couldn't contain Malik Monk. Again, it's really hard to get that engine running that late in the game. It's like you kind of set a tone, and especially once you've given the other team hope, they're going to bring their engine. They're going to be running at a high level that's going to be difficult to match. That's why it's so important to crush hope with teams like this. We're about to go check out Lakers Grizzlies here in a minute. I think it's imperative for the Lakers to get an early lead to sap some of the energy from the Grizzlies. If they allow it to stay close, it's a one-point game in the third quarter. That's where Memphis' youthful energy and athleticism and physicality is going to become an advantage for them. It's been like this the whole series, but in games 3, 4, and 5, the Warriors did a much better job containing dribble penetration from De'Aaron Fox and Malik Monk. We talk a lot about schemes on this show, not as much as some of the other shows. There are guys that really heavily focus on sets and counters and all that sort of thing. I think that can get a little in the weeds for the way that we do it here. I prefer to focus a little bit more on a balance between personnel, other basketball concepts, and then some scheme stuff. One of the big reasons why is because I think that at the end of the day, regardless of what sets you run or how complicated your counters are, your personnel has to execute. It doesn't matter if you run the perfect set if a guy doesn't set a solid screen. Or you can blow a play up defensively just by not allowing yourself to get screened. More often than anything having to do with the sets, it does come down to personnel, sheer force of will in combination with your athletic tools, and the skill set you have that you can use in conjunction with those athletic tools. In this game, that push and pull, that tug of war that takes place in dribble penetration, that was a battle the Kings won in game 1 and 2. Then the Warriors got control of it and then they let go of the rope tonight. Then they ended up getting their ass kicked at home. This series is not over. I believe the Kings will probably be a slight favorite in game 7, probably a one-point favorite, but the Warriors have a very good chance to win that game because in large part I did think effort and energy played a huge role in game 7. Sacramento was in an even better motivational position in game 5 coming off of two losses, and the Warriors went into Sacramento and just soundly outplayed them. So it's not over, but a very disappointing effort from the Warriors. I want to give a bunch of guys specific credit on the Kings. De'Aaron Fox in that first half, his transition rim pressure was incredible. Malik Monk in the second half, I covered him with the Lakers last year. He was one of my favorite players on that team. Rob Plinkett was incapable of retaining him because the only offer he could make without hard capping the team was that Lonnie Walker contract at about $6 million a year, and the Kings were able to give him $10 million a year. So it wasn't realistic that they were going to be able to keep him, but he was one of my favorite players that season. He had great chemistry with LeBron James. He was a reliable scorer. He was one of their best plus-minus guys, and watching his game manifest really well at this level has been impressive. Honestly, it's the latest example of if you have one elite skill, truly elite skill, you can be an impact player in the NBA playoffs. In Malik Monk, it's just impossible to keep him in front off the dribble because of his combination of quickness, athleticism, and pull-up shooting that forces you to play up on him. Sabonis has been struggling a lot in this particular series. He struggled a lot in the later portions of this game. He actually got off to a good start in this game. It's actually one of the wildest subplots of this series is that the Kings are tied 3-3, basically getting nothing out of Sabonis. But Trey Lyles is a different type of perimeter-oriented player, a little more comfortable off the dribble, a little more comfortable from the three-point line. He holds up well enough defensively to not be a huge drop-off from Sabonis, who's not a great defender either. He actually helps them a lot on the offensive end of the floor. I thought he played pretty well. Kevin Herter hit a bunch of big shots after struggling throughout the series. I am so impressed by this Kings team. 0-4 here in Chase Center through this point in the season. It'd been so easy to just let go of the rope and be like, I don't believe we can win this game. No, they came in confident and flat-out punked the Warriors on their home floor. But that said, the Warriors are defending champs for a reason. They're four-time champs. I expect them to bounce back and bring a great effort in Game 7. I expect that to come down to the wire and be an incredible basketball game. I'm very, very excited for that. All right, guys. That is all we have for right now. We will be back later tonight with a breakdown of Grizzlies Lakers.