How Mike Brown is helping Kings deal with lack of NBA playoff experience
How Brown is helping Kings deal with lack of playoff experience originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
The Kings are the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference heading into the NBA playoffs. Still, their inexperience and having to face the Golden State Warriors has many choosing the defending NBA champions in the series.
Sacramento and its fans will hear the word "experience" a lot. Nonetheless, Kings coach Mike Brown knows that the only way his squad can gain those playoff battle scars is to go through the grind.
"I don't think there's any other way but to go through it," Brown told reporters Wednesday. "You prepare your team as best you can, and you talk to them about the experiences that you've had as a coach and as a player, and then you lace them up and you go out there and you get through it.
"As we all know, there's no better teacher than experience. But you can talk until you're blowing face. You can watch film until you're blue in the face. You could drill it until you're blue in the face. It's hard to simulate what it's really going to be like until you actually go through it."
While the Kings lack playoff experience, the team has two players on their squad who have been through the postseason grind: Harrison Barnes and Matthew Dellavedova, who each have won NBA championships.
Additionally, assistant coach Leandro Barbosa has been through enough playoff battles as a player and addressed the team on what it will take to get four wins over the Warriors and advance deeper into the playoffs.
"At our team dinner last night, we had Delly address the group from his perspective, being a champion and going through the playoffs. We had HB address the group from his perspective, and then we had Leandro Barbosa as a player and as a coach address the group.
"So again, we can keep throwing stuff at our guys, which we will, but at the end of the day, the best teacher is going to be actually going through it and seeing how you hold up to the different things that come your way, especially when they're adverse things."
RELATED: Kings' Mike Brown named NBCA Coach of the Year for 2023
The simplest way for the Kings to quiet down the discussion surrounding their "experience" will be to take Game 1 and not dig themselves into a hole they cannot escape.
However, if Sacramento fails to hold down home-court advantage, expect the experience talk to get louder.
