Kings coach Mike Brown considers it a ‘blessing and a curse’ to have faced the Warriors in the playoffs first-round

Coach Mike Brown knows that his first year leading the Sacramento Kings is just the tip of the iceberg, the start of his revolution, and every playoff win or loss will eventually mean an important learning experience for the team’s future. 

His squad is young in many ways, not only age-wise but also inexperienced. That’s why he dedicated himself throughout the season to inject confidence in his players, just like how Keegan Murray and De’Aaron Fox began the tournament with fear in every shot they took, but ended the campaign as one of the most efficient shooters in the league.

WHAT A SEASON FOR THE KINGS 👏

🟣 Made playoffs for the first time in 17 years
🟣 Finished as the 3-seed in the West
🟣 Mike Brown named COTY and Swipa won Clutch Player 🏆
🟣 Pushed the defending champs to a Game 7 pic.twitter.com/TAhsgnGlHl

— ESPN (@espn) May 1, 2023

This is why the trainer beleives that is was both a ‘blessing and a curse’ to face the reigning champions in their first postseason matchup, because even though they lost 4-3 in the series, the experience will force them to mature in many senses for what’s to come.

“We’ll live with whatever happens,” Brown said time and time again throughout their playoff run.

After 16 long years outside of postseason action for the California franchise, the squad star Fox had nothing left but praise for the Kings after fighting Golden State all the way to Game 7 and all the growth that this has meant for their young roster.

“Whoever’s back next year, we’re still a relatively young team,” he said. “I feel like we learned a lot this series, and like I said, that’s why this is a blessing and a curse to play against this team in the first round. We learned a lot and you just try to build off that.

“This is a lot of our first times in the postseason. You got a taste of it. You got to feel what it was like to play against a team who’s a championship contender just about year in and year out. You take that and you build off of it.”

Fox was a leader during their entire season, and at the final stages still showed his strength as he played with a broken index finger on his shooting hand the final three matches.

“This is definitely a building block. Obviously, being able to play a team like this, who we all have tremendous respect for, who’ve been there done that, it’s definitely just something that you build on,” said Fox, who shined in his playoff debut with averages of 27.4 points.

“We had a good season, we were the third seed, we stayed relatively healthy. You could learn a lot. You’re not the favorite to win.”

The city of Sacramento also deserved recognition for their incessant suport

Now everyone inside the franchise feels eager to take the next step into the following campaign. However, coach Brown doesn’t want to look foward without first thanking the amazing Sacramento crowd who followed them throughout the season.

Take a look at some the highlights of this iconic year for the Kings:

“We’ll be better from this experience going forward. Our guys are definitely hurting right now, which obviously they should be,” Brown said. “I’ve got a lot of gratitude for every man in that locker room, not just the players, but the medical performance staff, the coaching staff and everybody else in the front office.

“The organization was terrific this year and you wish you could’ve gotten more, especially for the city and for the fans, but nobody in our organization should be dropping their heads right now.”

You could say Stephen Curry almost eliminated Sacramento all by himself, scoring a historic 50-point winner in Game 7 on the Kings’ home court as the San Francisco squad became the first defending champions to recover from a 2-0 deficit series.