Sacramento had limited playoff experience heading into their first-round series against the Golden State Warriors. Nonetheless, the Kings have a couple of players on the team who have won an NBA championship.
Harrison Barnes is one player the Kings will lean on for his playoff experience after he won a championship with the Warriors in 2015. Barnes spoke with The Athletic and shared behind-the-scene details on what he told his teammates at a pre-playoff dinner before they embarked on their postseason journey.
“It was the same vibe that we had for the preseason,” Barnes told The Athletic. “We had talked about how we wanted to be a team that established our principles, played the right way every single night, gave ourselves a chance to win and hopefully we would be in a position where we could make the playoffs.
“Fast forward 82 games later, and now it’s a situation where we’ve done that. But as the season has gone on, we’ve adjusted our goals. We know what we want to do, and now is when we put everything together. All of the dress rehearsals, all of the talks about ‘This is what the playoffs look like,’ — now it’s time to put that together.”
Nonetheless, Barnes notes that he wasn’t the only one to share his experience with his young Kings teammates.
The 30-year-old revealed that Matthew Dellavedova and assistant coach Leandro Barbosa, who both have an NBA championship, also spoke to the team.
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“[Barbosa] talked about his career, his playoff experience,” Barnes continued. “Delly talked about his playoff experience. And for me, it was mostly just impressing upon the guys that you just never know when these opportunities will happen. I made the playoffs for four straight years at the beginning of my career, and I thought making the playoffs was going to be just a routine thing. I thought that most teams would get to the playoffs, and that was just a given. And then I didn’t see the playoffs for seven years.
“I just let them know that with these meaningful games and these opportunities, you want to take a moment to truly embrace it and just be grateful for that experience. But at the same time, you want to set your sight on a run. If you don’t have the confidence, and you don’t have the grit to dig out wins in a series, then it’s gonna be a quick series. I think we saw that in the last couple games before the regular season ended (when the Kings lost seven of their last 12 games). We left chips on the table.”
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While experience was the primary question concerning the Kings, especially in a matchup against the Warriors, Sacramento hasn't looked overwhelmed through the first two games.
However, the test will be on the road now as the series shifts to the Bay Area and whether the Kings can handle the hostile environment of a road playoff game. Sacramento needs at least one game on the road to put the Warriors on the brink of elimination.