The playoffs have arrived! The Kings and Warriors start their respective marches to the title on Monday April 24^th. Looking at just regular season record, this would appear to be one of the more boring first round matchups. But late season injuries and moves see the Kings stumble into this one – at least as much as a 57-win team can stumble. Hopefully this series will be one of many great battles between the league’s top 16 teams.

Injuries

Usually we wouldn’t start off with such a sour topic, but these could carry significant weight in this series and mainly as a potential equalizer. Warriors’ backup point guard Rodney Stuckey will be out – not a huge loss at a high level, but the Warriors are pretty thin in the backcourt and Stuckey was a double-digit scorer for the Warriors in in his 49 games (more than half starts). The Warriors will need to play late-season acquisition Shabazz Muhammad a bit out of position at the two, while also getting their three true guards (Marcus Smart, Jose Barea, and T.J. McConnell) as many minutes as they can handle. Luol Deng may also miss some time, depending upon the league’s ruling on players that were shut down earlier in the season to allow younger guys to get some minutes.

Looking across the state to Sacramento, it becomes obvious why this topic is so key – not only to this series, but the Western Conference playoff picture. The Kings’ two best players’ playoff participation hangs in medical limbo. Early word is that Carmelo Anthony will shake off his late-season injury troubles and try to come back from the get-go, while Reggie Jackson is still being evaluated by the medical staff. The ability of these two to play will be completely pivotal in this first round series. The Kings come in likely favorites, assuming their health – but if one is down, it gets close to even and if both are down the odds may shift in Golden State’s favor.

Matchups

NLL playoff series are like chess matches, each team making adjustments and counter-adjustments – or just scrambling to find something that works. On top of that, in this series specifically we’ve got some marquee players with their health in question. Due to this, we’ll take a look at the starting backcourt and frontcourt of each team, along with a look at their backups to try and discern who has the edge in this one.

Frontcourt

The starters up front for the Kings are a utility bunch that do a good job doing the dirty work so that their more talented perimeter counterparts can win games. Boban Marjanovic and Taj Gibson will likely get the starting nod, and provide a great combination of length, shot blocking and rebounding – but really don’t offer much else.

The Warriors have a similar balance, where most of the talent is in the backcourt. However, while the Kings rely on bruisers inside, the Warriors have a litany of stretch fours and fives. They’ll likely continue to start the Kaminsky/Saric duo, but may turn to Jon Leuer if things don’t start well, and have guys like Smith, Lauvergne, and Deng that could also be called into duty. The differences in personnel make this hard to evaluate, but due to the space they create for the offense, I’m giving the edge to the Warriors.

Backcourt

The backcourt isn’t quite as much of a contrast in styles as the interior, but there are certainly stylistic differences. They league has shifted to playing 3 perimeter oriented guys, so we’re including the “3s” in the backcourt as well. The Kings rely on the star power of their two ball-dominant stars – Jackson and Anthony, along with their do-it-all wing, Nicolas Batum.

The Warriors feature surprise/first-time all-star Harrison Barnes more than anybody else, but generally work to pass the ball around amongst all 5 players on the court at all times. Due to their frontcourt’s ability to spread the floor, their guards usually have a lot of room to operate, but Smart and Barea are just not on the same level as Jackson and Batum. As previously mentioned, the Warriors are a bit thin in the backcourt without Stuckey, and even more thin if Deng can’t play some minutes on the wing. The Kings have finally sorted through their multi-year point guard logjam and have a nice balance to their guard rotation with Rondo and Green, but may be placing a bit too much faith in 37 year old Ron Artest. Edge here goes to the Kings based on talent and depth both.

What Are They Saying

GM’s Take

Kings GM Klemmelo took some trade-deadline heat from the media for trading Klay Thompson, but he took it in stride and promised that he would silence the critics come postseason time. You can argue with the trade, or any trade for that matter – but there are a lot of GMs around the league that get a ton of credit for finding the right chemistry in their team, and prior to some late season injuries – Klemmelo has seem to have done that. He hasn’t issued any comments on the series just yet, but his statements to date have put us all on notice – the Kings aren’t necessarily looking past this series, but they have bigger plans in mind.

The people of Oakland are basically hosting parades at this point. They feel like they’ve found their GM-savior. Sure, they only got to 38 wins, but that’s 6 more than they’ve had in 6 years. And they haven’t tasted the glory of NLL playoff basketball in 14 years. [Yes – I was a Sophomore in college, living with TWolves GM Spudspace and now am 11 years removed from college… that’s how long it’s been]. They’re the ultimate spoiler team… they don’t give a damn if they win the series – other than the misery that it would put on top of the in-state rival Kings. MaiLo is thrilled to be on this stage… and he should be!

Media Take

Currently a little more than 1 in 10 people think the Warriors can do this. It is completely possible that their style of putting five shooters on the floor will be enough of a shock to any team that they can steal a game. Stealing a seven game series is much more difficult – but it’s still possible, especially when accounting for the possibility of the Kings’ stars missing games. It seems like the media is pretty confident that the Kings will be healthy for their playoff run and there aren’t many picking the Warriors publicly – although you know you’ll be rooting for them in your living room, it’s hard to cheer against a lower seed!

Author’s Take

I think the Kings have this. I think the Warriors will steal 2 games off of them due to their ability to spread the floor. But when it comes down to it – superior talent is going to win. The win differential is almost 20 games between these teams, and you can’t look past that. The Warriors will do more damage than they should as a 38-win tie-break-winning participant, but the Kings will move on as expected – much to the dismay of the Thunder and Lakers.