The Los Angeles Lakers may have the best record in the NBA, 11-4, but the title champions are far from perfect. After opening a huge advantage against the Golden State Warriors at home on Monday night, the Lakers ended up falling 115-113. Despite a perfect 7-0 record, the Lakers are now only 0.500 at home with a 4-4 mark.
It was a forgettable performance for practically the whole team. LeBron James and Anthony Davis posted 6 of 16 identical lines of fire, while the team as a whole made 16 turns. The Warriors were far from perfect, but managed to capitalize on the Lakers’ mistakes to gain a victory that took them beyond 0.500, after a recent skid knocked them down to 6-6. Here are four main topics from the Monday night thriller.
1. Never take your foot off the accelerator pedal
If you are looking for a move that encapsulated the Lakers’ defeat, it was at this point that the second half was less than a minute away. The Lakers forced a comeback, giving LeBron a 4 to 1 opportunity in the transition. Instead of attacking the basket, he kicks Dennis Schroder in the corner for a 3-point basket.
The result was quite innocuous. Schroder missed, but Davis grabbed the rebound and hit two free throws after being knocked down. It’s the Lakers’ season in a nutshell. They are so talented that the wrong process can lead to the right result. The Lakers should have come out of that quick break with a tray. They got lazy and left with two points anyway.
But that approach did not last. The Lakers led this game with up to 19 points in the first quarter alone. They led for eight with less than four minutes to play. But they lost in large part due to their own laissez-faire approach to protecting leads. The Lakers took their foot off the accelerator pedal. Your opponents have not been good enough to punish you for it so far. The Warriors were, and fortunately, that reminds the Lakers that the games are 48 minutes long.
2. Reliable former
The faces around the two may have changed, but Stephen Curry and Draymond Green are still playing exactly the same dagger game they’ve abused since 2015. Curry-Green’s pick-and-roll is virtually unstoppable, and like Monday proved that it remains true even without Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson making room for it.
The logic is simple. There are many ways to defend a pick-and-roll. Double Curry off the screen and Green wins a 4-on-3. He will make the right pass or hit an easy tray, as he did here.
Change the action and Curry will have an incompatibility against a great man. Yes, even Anthony Davis qualifies for this transfer, a cousin of traditional pick-and-roll.
There is no answer here. Defend it traditionally and Curry will reach a pull-up 3. You can’t blitz or switch. Most of the time, this move will pay off. All you can do defensively is to expect them to make mistakes. The Warriors did not do so on Monday. Even without Durant and Thompson, the Warriors have the same finishing move as ever.
3. The clock is running out on the positive variation of the Lakers
The Lakers are an excellent defensive team, but they have been very lucky at the beginning of the season. Opponents were shooting just 35 percent in the 3 open points, coming in Monday as the fifth lowest mark in the league, and only 33.9 percent in the 3s overall, the NBA’s fourth lowest number. In general, defenders don’t have much control over whether or not their opponents hit their 3 points, especially the open ones, but so far this season, the Lakers were benefiting from the fact that they didn’t.
This has not yet changed entirely. The Warriors hit only 12 of 37 in total. But eight of those bombs came in the second half, which the Lakers lost by 18 points. Consider your own 9 out of 29 performance behind the hoop, and the Lakers’ loss looks pretty simple. The Warriors made their shots in the second half and the Lakers did not. If the Lakers had played at full speed, they could have managed to collect the three points needed to win the game in regulation. The Lakers have beaten the odds so far this season, but they cannot do that when they are also outperforming themselves.
4. Golden State beginners falter again
The Warriors falling behind in 19 was yet another page in a story that Steve Kerr refuses to rewrite. Golden State’s five starters, Curry, Green, Andrew Wiggins, James Wiseman and Kelly Oubre Jr., were topped by 45 points in 126 minutes before Monday’s game. Suffice it to say that these numbers don’t look better now. Meanwhile, all six Warriors reserves who took the floor had a positive points differential. In essence, each lineup except the top five are working for the Warriors now.
There is a simple solution here. Just replace Oubre with Damion Lee in the starting lineup, giving the top five the spacing they need to score and the bench a little more athletic strength. Yes, this can undermine the tremendous work these backups are doing, but Golden State cannot hope to overcome 19-point deficits every night. The best teams don’t have big twists, they avoid needing them in the first place. So far, Kerr seems to disagree, and Monday probably reinforced his decision to stick with the same opening group.