The Golden State Warriors have struggled with playing down to their opponents’ level throughout the regular season, but head coach Steve Kerr is confident that won’t be the case in Wednesday’s Game 5 against the Sacramento Kings. Despite the potential absence of De’Aaron Fox, who is limited by a broken index finger on his shooting hand, Kerr believes the Kings’ raucous crowd will help keep the Warriors focused.
“I think Sacramento’s crowd will make sure we don’t let our guard down,” Kerr said on Tuesday. “They will help us quite a bit in that regard. It’s different in April and May and June than it is in January, December. If we let our guard down, there is something seriously wrong with us. We’ll be ready to go.”
While the Warriors have struggled on the road this season, including a league-worst 11-30 record outside of Chase Center, Kerr believes the stakes of playoff basketball and the intensity of the Kings’ crowd will prevent his team from succumbing to their typical letdowns.
However, the Warriors lost Games 1 and 2 in Sacramento, continuing their struggles on the road. A closer examination of those games shows that they were closer than the final score indicated, with Andrew Wiggins missing a game-winning three-pointer in the opener and the Warriors trailing by just one point in Game 2 before Draymond Green’s ejection.
Despite those setbacks, the Warriors are at full strength heading into Game 5, having won both games at home to tie the series. Kerr believes that the momentum from those victories, coupled with Fox’s injury, gives the Warriors an advantage in the pivotal game.
“We’ve shown that we can compete with this team on the road,” Kerr said. “We’re at full strength, and we’re ready to go.”
The Warriors will look to prove Kerr’s confidence in them is well-placed as they seek to take control of the series on the road.
The Curry Conundrum: Steve Kerr Heavy Reliance on the Golden State Superstar in the Playoffs
Despite initially stating that playing Stephen Curry for “40+ minutes isn’t the answer,” Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr has relied heavily on his superstar as they battle back from a 2-0 deficit against the Sacramento Kings. In their last three games, Curry has played 41, 37, and nearly 43 minutes, respectively. In Game 4, Curry played the last 15 minutes as the game went down to the wire.
However, a couple of mistakes in the final 45 seconds, including a missed floater and a botched timeout, put the Warriors’ playoff destiny in jeopardy. Nonetheless,
Kerr acknowledges that Curry’s brilliance is vital in this series, saying, “I’d like to get those minutes down, but every game is going to call for something different. He was brilliant out there tonight. They put a ton of pressure on us to start the fourth-quarter, and because of their run, I wasn’t able to get him out for his rest mid-fourth. That ramped his minutes up.” As the Warriors-Kings series remains on a knife-edge, it’s likely that Curry will continue to play 40+ minutes in each game.
Do you think the Golden State Warriors can pull off a comeback and win the series against the Sacramento Kings with Stephen Curry playing such high minutes?
