Santa Claus comes early for the NBA tonight.
After all those years of irrelevant basketball before Christmas, with the holiday unofficially marking the actual start of each season inside the league’s Fifth Avenue offices in New York City, this Kings–Warriors tilt at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento is their sugarplum vision realized for the inaugural In-Season Tournament. A winner-take-all (ish) rematch between regional rivals that entertained the masses in a seven-game, first-round playoff series back in April. Stars galore, from Stephen Curry to De’Aaron Fox on down. As if that wasn’t enough, there’s this oh-so-convenient subplot.
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Draymond Green, the Warriors’ resident villain who hasn’t played in Sacramento since that series in which he stomped on Domantas Sabonis’ chest in Game 2 and was suspended for Game 3, is set to return from the five-game suspension he earned with that chokehold of Minnesota’s Rudy Gobert on Nov. 14. Imagine that.
“When I first saw the suspension, I (thought), ‘Five games, and of course we play them (in) that sixth game,’” Fox said after practice Monday. “But I mean, it is what it is.”
And what it is, make no mistake, is proof positive that the tournament is a smashing success so far.
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As anyone who has paid close attention to the Association on this part of the calendar is well aware, the most interesting storylines in recent years have typically been rooted in off-court developments. Locker room strife on teams that underperform early. The annual monitoring of which coaches are on the hot seat. Trade rumors. That sort of thing.
The actual basketball, while important and enjoyable in some circles, lacks real meaning until the second half of the season rolls around. And the players — especially in this load management era that has been turned on its head with the league’s sweeping changes this season — often took the sort of long-view approach to competing that was, well, hard to watch. But as the Denver Nuggets’ Aaron Gordon put it recently after a down-to-the-wire win over the LA Clippers, “I think the Cup is bringing the energy out of people.”
"I think the Cup is bringing the energy out of people."
Aaron Gordon on the #NBACup intensity in Denver 🗣️
🏆 NBA In-Season Tournament
🏀 West Group B action on TNT— NBA (@NBA) November 15, 2023
Green, as it turned out, had dragged Gobert across the Chase Center floor during Golden State’s In-Season Tournament game against Minnesota mere minutes after Gordon shared that soundbite. So yes, in other words, he might be onto something there.
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Green took that vibe and ran with it (again) Sunday, telling reporters he expected the game against the Kings to be “like a Game 7.” Now maybe that’s a hyperbolic take, or maybe it’s right on point. Or, perhaps, maybe it’s just Green’s way of reminding Kings fans of that painful April 30 night when Curry dropped a 50-piece on their beloved team’s heads and skipped away with the series win. However you see it, league officials are surely ecstatic about this much: You know you want to tune in to TNT to find out.
“This is what the NBA wants — something like this,” Kings coach Mike Brown said Monday.
And more, really.
Tonight alone, 16 teams — Charlotte, New York, Milwaukee, Miami, Atlanta, Cleveland, Brooklyn, Boston, Minnesota, Houston, Golden State, Sacramento, New Orleans, Orlando, Philadelphia and Phoenix — can advance to the knockout rounds (12 of which are playing). It’s not March Madness, but it’s a whole lot more entertaining than what the league was putting out in the winter months before.
But beyond the (oft-aggressive) marketing aspect of this new project, from the gaudy courts to the slick ads and the like, there’s something fun about watching the players show genuine interest in meeting this moment. They may be fuzzy on some of the rules, but they certainly know the basics.
Eight teams out of 30 will advance to the single-elimination knockout round (Dec. 4-5), with four teams moving on to the final two rounds in Las Vegas (Dec. 7 and 9) and the chance at the first-ever NBA Cup. The players on the championship team win $500,000 each, with players on the second-place team getting $200,000, the players on the two losing semifinal teams getting $100,000 and quarterfinal losers earning $50,000. Per ESPN, head coaches will be paid on the same scale, and assistant coaches will be paid from an additional pool that amounts to 75 percent of that amount.
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“Guys definitely want to (win the tournament),” Fox said. “I mean, if you could win that first In-Season Tournament, you’re stamped in history, just like for me last year with the (inaugural) Clutch Player of the Year (award that he won). Like, no one can ever take that away from you. You’re the first to ever do it. … So I think guys definitely want to be able to win that.”
The cash prize doesn’t hurt either. While the winner’s purse is hardly enough to inspire superstars who are bringing in $50 million-plus a year, it’s meaningful money for the role-player types. In this Kings-Warriors game, for example, 11 players who get minutes are making approximately $5 million this season. And if you happen to see Warriors rookie Trayce Jackson-Davis playing like he’s in the NBA Finals on Tuesday night, don’t be surprised: His league-minimum salary of $1.1 million is the lowest of them all on these two teams.
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As Brown shared, his staff has been finding clever ways to remind players that $500,000 can go a long way. Before each of their tournament games against Oklahoma City, Minnesota and San Antonio, the coaches shared their hypothetical investment research that was specific to that night’s opponent.
“(Before the Thunder game), they put up what size house you can buy in Oklahoma City for half a million dollars,” Brown said with a smile. “They put up how many bottles of red wine and white wine you can buy for half a million dollars.
“One of the things we put up (for the players) in Minnesota is how many families you can feed during Christmas, if you wanted to do (something) charity-wise. … I think it was like 2,500 families or something like that. So our coaching staff’s pretty creative in that way.”
Sure enough, they won all three games.
While a Kings win against Golden State means they advance to the knockout rounds and secure a home game in the quarterfinals, they would be eliminated with a loss to the Warriors and an Oklahoma City win over Minnesota on Tuesday night. If the Warriors win and the Timberwolves beat the Thunder, however, there would be a three-way tie that would be broken by point differential.
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For the Kings’ purposes, their Warriors baggage has grown even heavier since they dropped that Game 7 heartbreaker in the playoffs. They fell to Golden State twice in preseason games that had playoff atmospheres — once in overtime in Sacramento and a second time when Curry buried a deep 3 for the late game-winner.
In their first regular-season matchup, Curry scored 41 points in a 122-114 Warriors win at Golden 1 Center, sending Kings fans home with his favorite “night-night” move. In their second regular-season meeting, the Fox-less Kings fell at the buzzer at Chase Center on a Klay Thompson game-winner from the top of the key. In all, that’s seven Kings losses in eight games against the Warriors since they went up 2-1 in their series. Add in the In-Season Tournament factor, and we might have a late November game that moves the needle like its May.
“With the history of the last two years between us, it was gonna be that type of game anyway,” Kings forward Harrison Barnes told The Athletic “Honestly, I think it’s just about getting wins. The West right now is so tight, so one game here or there is gonna send you up or down. I think that it’s great to be able to compete in the tournament, to be a part of this, as well as continuing to keep the long-term focus.”
Related reading
Slater: Kings have momentum entering Golden State game
Kawakami: Klay Thompson’s edgy moment and the Warriors’ fighting soul
(Top photo of Stephen Curry, De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
