The Sacramento Kings headed to San Francisco with a commanding 2-0 lead over the Golden State Warriors. Now, they return to the California capital tied 2-2. The team suffered two losses on the road in their opening 2023 NBA playoffs series. Game 3 was a 17-point wire-to-wire win for the Warriors and Game 4 was a heartbreaking one-point loss for the Kings. Now, heading into Kings-Warriors Game 5, here are the three key adjustments Sacramento must make to get control of the series back.

3. Get Domantas Sabonis more involved

It’s no secret that Kings guard De’Aaron Fox is the engine that makes the team go. He led the team in scoring in the regular season with 25.0 points per game, is leading in the NBA playoffs with 31.5 points per game, and he even won the inaugural NBA Clutch Player of the Year Award for the 2022-23 season.

However, heading into Kings-Warriors Game 5, Sacramento has two problems with Fox. One is that he has a broken finger. The guard fractured the tip of his left index finger at the end of Game 4, and while he will almost surely play in Game 5, no one knows how this will affect Fox’s scoring.

The second issue is that the Warriors may have found a way to stop — or at least slow down — Fox.

In the second half of Game 4, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr put forward Draymond Green on the guard, and the Warriors’ agitator did a great job on Fox, especially on the final possession where Green forced Fox to give the ball up to Harrison Barnes to take the potential game-winning shot, which he missed.

These two factors mean that the Kings have to focus a bit more on getting others involved.

One of those players is Domantas Sabonis. The big man averaged 19.1 points per game in the regular season but has dipped down to 16.3 in the 2023 NBA playoffs. The Kings need to make a conscious effort to get him the ball in scoring position more in the next game.

This will not only help the team with more points, but it could also pull Green off of Fox if he has to go down and guard Sabonis more often.

A big Kings-Warriors Game 5 performance from Sabonis could make a huge difference in not only the outcome on Wednesday night but the series overall.

2. Limit Jordan Poole’s shots

On the other side of the ball, the Kings need to do a better defensive job on Jordan Poole.
Obviously, Sacramento head coach Mike Brown would love for his team to shut down Stephen Curry or even Klay Thompson, but that’s not all that realistic. Teams have been trying to do that for years, and it rarely works out.

What is a real possibility is that the team does a better job defending Poole as the team’s tertiary scorer.

In Games 1 and 2, Poole had 17 and 4 points, respectively. In Games 3 and 4, those numbers jumped to 16 and 22. And more than the points, the Kings' defensive focus should be on limiting his shots.

In the two Kings’ wins, Poole took 25 total shots. In the two Warriors wins Poole got up 41. Poole is a volume shooter and scorer, so the more they can limit his looks at the basket, the better off Sacramento will be in Game 5.

1. Nothing.

In the NBA playoffs, teams always need to make small adjustments before every game to keep the opposition on its toes. The Kings-Warriors series is no exception.

That said, the Kings shouldn’t be making massive, wholesale changes after losing two consecutive games on the Warriors' home floor. This is what the Warriors do, and despite the wins, the Kings still have the home-court advantage in the series.

Golden State has been awful on the road this season. The team was 11-30 away from home in the 2022-23 campaign, and only the lowly Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs, and Houston Rockets were worse.

Golden State is also experienced and battle-tested. And even though right now, the Kings are the better team top to bottom, they weren’t going to go out of the postseason without a fight. Now that the Kings have weathered the storm, they just need to keep doing what they do and get a win at home in Game 5.

They say a playoff series doesn’t truly start until the home team loses, and that hasn’t happened yet in this series. It is now a best-of-three tournament, and the Kings have the advantage of two games on their home court and a team that won more games this regular season.

The Kings best plan of action is to not change too much.