Credit: Twitter
Sacramento Kings won the hard-fought Game 1 of their NBA Playoffs, Round 1 against defending champions Golden State Warriors on Saturday night as Kings guard De'Aaron Fox erupted for 38 points and becomes the joint-second player of all-time in most points on playoff debut. However, Fox also showed respect to the all-time three-point top scorer, Stephen Curry, after the game.
Apart from Fox, Malik Monk registered 32 points for the Kings while center Domantas Sabonis made 12 points and 16 rebounds. For the Warriors, Steph Curry led the scoring with 30 points followed by Klay Thompson with 21 points while Jordan Poole and Andrew Wiggins scored 17 points each.
In a post-game interview, Fox, who was sitting alongside Malik Monk, was asked about his take on guarding the two-time NBA MVP. The 25-year-old Kings guard mentioned teammate Matthew Dellavedova at the beginning and talked about how difficult it is to guard Curry.
Fox said, "Y'all see that clip of J.R. Smith and he was talking about Delly? ... That sh*t's real. It's real. I mean, obviously, I didn't guard Steph the entire game but most of the first quarter, most of the fourth quarter I guarded him. That clip is real."
He ended by showing his respect towards Curry and said, "Just trying to be as disruptive as possible while guarding if not the best player in the world, the best player to ever shoot a basketball."
JR Smith talking about Matthew Dellavedova
During a recording of The Old Man and The Three podcast, Cavaliers guard J.R. Smith shared an incident from the 2015 NBA Finals between Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors. Dellavedova infamously locked down Steph Curry in Game 2 of the NBA Finals but was all drained out after that.
JR Smith said in the clip, "I love Delly to death, but Delly almost died guarding Steph Curry. No, literally almost died. We have footage of this man in the ice tub, like, literally to his neck, trying to guard this man."
