Mike Brown is a known UFC fan, and the Kings coach wants his team to take a fighting stance in Game 7 against the Golden State Warriors.
To no one's surprise, the Beam Team is all in on their leader's mantra.
"I told our guys, ‘You know what, we’re not getting a call. This is like a UFC championship fight,' " Brown told reporters after Sacramento's Game 6 win Friday at Chase Center. "In the UFC, if you’re the challenger and you’re fighting a champion, you can’t out-point them, you can’t out-decision them. You’ve got to go take it from them."
In short, the Kings can't rely on anyone but themselves if they want to win the first-round NBA playoff series against Golden State and advance to the Western Conference semifinals -- not the refs, not the crowd and certainly not the Warriors.
They'll have to fight tooth and nail for every bucket, and that's what helped them take Game 6. Speaking to reporters Saturday at practice, the shiner on Domantas Sabonis' eye was symbolic of that attitude after he took a Kevon Looney elbow to the face the day before.
"I think it’s good," Sabonis said of Brown's UFC analogy (h/t Fox 40's Sean Cunningham). "I mean, I don’t think the game’s going to be pretty tomorrow, knowing both teams. It’s whoever wins. Once the buzzer goes off, whoever has the most points. I think we’re just going to come out there and fight."
Kings forward Trey Lyles, who played a critical role in Friday's win by filling in at the 5, said the Kings took Brown's words to heart.
"I think we’ve all bought into that," Lyles told reporters Saturday (h/t Cunningham). "We know that we’re a younger team, up-and-coming team, don’t get a lot of -- I’m not going to say “respect” -- but a lot of calls that maybe another team would’ve, so we’ve just got to continue to go out there and fight and play through it and not complain about calls that we should be getting or calls that shouldn’t be getting called.
"We’ve just got to continue to go out there and fight, and we play for one another and the rest will handle itself."
There's no tougher task than facing the defending NBA champions right off the bat in your first playoff appearance in 17 years, but the Kings are up for the challenge -- bruises and all.
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And should Sacramento hit Golden State with a knockout, the 916 will be rocking until it's time to face LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers in the next round.