The NBA script played out perfectly during the last remaining games of the regular season, since recent rivals the Warriors and Kings will now face off in the Play-In Tournament.
NBA fans will remember Golden State and Sacramento’s wild first-round series from last season.
The battle stretched to seven games, with the Warriors emerging as victors in a series full of drama.
Warriors forward Draymond Green expects this clash to be no different.
“It’s always a playoff-type game,” Green said after the Warriors 123-116 win over the Jazz on Sunday. “You feel that. You go into their arena, their fans want to light the beam and see us lose and beat the crap out of us. And when they come here, we want to beat the crap out of them. A lot of familiarity amongst the two organizations. It kind of has brewed into that.
“For us, it’s another game that we have to go win. We got to get it done.”
For the Kings, last season’s early exit is going to be a huge motivating factor, Kings guard Davion Mitchell says.
“I mean, it’s exciting – we get to get a little payback from last year,” Mitchell said. “We know they’re going to come in here with energy because we’re playing a home game. It’s going to be loud, it’s going to be physical, but I think we’re ready for it.
“The whole year I think we prepared ourselves for it, playing physical on both ends of the floor and I think we’ll be ready.”
Despite the win-or-go-home matchup being held at Golden 1 Center, Green thinks his away side will have the upper hand as the Kings are familiar rivals.
“They’ve definitely changed a little bit. We know this team pretty well, though, for the most part,” Green said. …”They’re very much so a pattern team. They got their things that they want to get to. Going into the game, understanding that [and] the things that we’ll be trying to take away and not let them get to those patterns. But we know them well. They know us well. So it won’t be a surprise.”
Though, Mitchell thinks Green and the Warriors might be in for a more of a surprise than they think due to the Kings’ improvement on D.
“I think covering for one another. We’re kind of on a streak defensively,” Mitchell said. “Helping each other out. If I get a backdoor cut and somebody beats me, you have my teammate helping. At the beginning of the year, that would be a layup or something easy like that.
“…We haven’t played them since the beginning of the season so it’s going to be a lot different than what they’ve seen.”
The two teams will play on Tuesday, April 16, with the game airing on TNT at 10PM (ET).