Kings-Warriors: Domantas Sabonis says battered, bruised left eye hurts going into Game 7

Domantas Sabonis looked like he’d been in a brawl following practice Saturday.

Sabonis’ left eye was swollen and bruised, looking like he took a right hook in the octagon. But fortunately for the All-Star center, there’s no structural damage surrounding his eye and he’s expecting to be ready Sunday afternoon when the Kings play the Golden State Warriors in Game 7.

“It’s not actually all this stuff that’s sore,” Sabonis said of the discoloration below his left eye. “I don’t really feel that. It’s the actual eye.”

When Sabonis does play against the Warriors, there’s a chance his eye remains sore. After taking an inadvertent elbow from Kevon Looney during a jump ball in the second quarter of Friday’s Game 6 victory, Sabonis indicated he feels pain when looking right and left. But beyond icing his face, there’s little he can do to treat it.

“There’s nothing. Just let it recover by itself,” he said.

Sabonis played a series-low 23 minutes in a stirring 118-99 Game 6 win over the Warriors in San Francisco. He dealt with foul trouble throughout the game and fouled out with 5:17 left in the fourth quarter. The time he sat was used by head coach Mike Brown to play smaller and faster with Trey Lyles at center, giving the Kings a look they hadn’t gone to previously in the series.

Given Sabonis’ eye issue, it’s fitting Brown has used references to mixed martial arts bouts when it comes to the physical series against the Warriors.

“You have to take the belt from the champion,” Brown said before Game 2. “You’re not out-pointing anybody. So we might as well take our jabs and throw those things out the window and just keep throwing haymakers.”

The Warriors, of course, are the defending champions from last season, with a core group that has experienced three Game 7s before. The first came in the 2016 Western Conference finals against the Oklahoma City Thunder, which capped a comeback from a 3-1 deficit to win the series. Then Golden State famously lost the NBA Finals a series later against the Cavaliers in seven games after blowing a 3-1 lead of their own.

Their last Game 7 came during the conference finals in 2018, when they outlasted the Houston Rockets on the road. That game included 27 missed 3s by James Harden and Co. just before the Kevin Durant-led Warriors swept Cleveland in the finals.

“I don’t think the game’s going to be pretty tomorrow,” Sabonis said. “... I think we’re going to fight, every possession.”

The Kings’ other wounded All-Star is point guard De’Aaron Fox, who played a better game Friday than Wednesday, three days after suffering an avulsion fracture to the index finger on his shooting hand. Fox scored eight of his 26 points in the fourth quarter after going scoreless in the final frame when the Kings lost Game 5.

“He’s always confident,” Brown said. “Everyone’s not going to play at their highest level all the time. You’re gonna have some ups and some downs. We still just want him to be aggressive. He’s not fazed at much. I hadn’t even thought of that (finger injury).”