Curry’s Warriors gave the Sacramento Kings life as the Kings dominated the champions on their home floor with a decisive win. But the Lakers treated the evening with the appropriate focus and put the Grizzlies out of their misery with the biggest playoff win of the first round. We are still one win away from either a playoff series with historical implications or one that strikes notes of history from over two decades ago.

Golden State and Sacramento will dance again Sunday afternoon — the Lakers earned the right to wait.

Here are five takeaways from Friday’s games.

The champions are unserious

Perhaps an easy way to see if a reigning champion has lost its edge is watching them squander opportunities to close out a series.

For the Warriors, a champion’s poise has been replaced by an arrogance that’s almost insulting, but if we’ve been watching them all season it shouldn’t be a surprise. The Warriors had everything going for them headed into Game 6: They believed they took the heart from the upstart Kings with a Game 5 win in Sacramento, and did not treat them with the appropriate respect coming into Friday. It was evident from the tip, when the Kings took an early lead and never quite looked back.

It felt reminiscent of the first two games when the Kings ran, and ran, and ran some more. De’Aaron Fox’s injury only slowed him down so much; the injured finger on his shooting hand didn’t stop him from getting wherever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He kept pushing the pace, in the set offense or after baskets or turnovers, and it kept the Warriors on their heels. If you didn’t know any better, with the way the Warriors approached the game, it wasn’t obvious which team was the playoff-tested bunch versus the novices.

 

Curry again looked casual, as he did in Game 5 for large stretches, but he wouldn’t be saved by his teammates. Instead, they followed his lead.

Jordan Poole has gotten a lot of slack in a lot of different spaces this season, but he signed a pretty sizable contract in the preseason that says he should be culpable for his role in the Warriors’ success. Instead, he acted like a Harlem Globetrotter for most of the night and his team can’t afford such an approach. Good and heady plays were offset by boneheaded ones, sometimes in the immediate aftermath. He can challenge defenses in ways his teammates can’t, but his shot selection often produces fast-break opportunities for the Kings, which cannot be gifted to them. He was 2 for 11 and Curry, while 9 of 21, had as many turnovers as assists (five).

Winning again in Sacramento might be too much to ask for a proud champion, and given how they played Friday, one wonders if it’ll even be close.

Coaching matchup

Steve Kerr is rightfully a top-15 coach of all time, but Mike Brown clearly learned from him and has some level of cheat code against his former employer.

Brown took lemons and made applesauce, abandoning some level of conventional wisdom and going small against the team that’s made going small famous. In the second quarter, the Kings went without any level of big man on the floor and the Warriors didn’t know what to do with it. Kerr responded by going with Kevon Looney and Draymond Green, and it didn’t work. Malik Monk, as he did in Game 5, ran wild all over the Warriors defense, scoring 28 with 7 rebounds.