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The Los Angeles Lakers may have the best record in the NBA at 11-4, but the defending champions are far from perfect. After opening a huge lead against the Golden State Warriors at home Monday night, the Lakers ultimately lost 115-113. Despite a perfect road record of 7-0, the Lakers are down to .500 at home with a 4-4 score.
It was an unforgettable performance from virtually the entire team. LeBron James and Anthony Davis posted 6 identical shooting lines of 16, while the team as a whole committed 16 turnovers. The Warriors were far from perfect, but they managed to capitalize on the Lakers’ mistakes to secure a victory that took them past .500 after a recent skid pulled them down to 6-6. Here are four takeaways from the Monday night thriller.
1. Never take your foot off the accelerator pedal.
If you’re looking for a game that sums up the Lakers’ loss, this is the moment with less than a minute left in the second quarter. The Lakers forced a turnover, giving LeBron a 4-1 transition opportunity. Rather than attacking the basket, he kicked Dennis Schroder in the corner for a 3 point.
The result was pretty harmless. Schroder missed, but Davis grabbed the rebound and made two free throws after being fouled. It’s 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 this quick break with a layup. They got lazy and walked out of the game with two points anyway.
But this approach did not last. The Lakers led the game with no less than 19 points in the first quarter alone. They were leading by eight with less than four minutes to go. But they lost in large part due to their own laissez-faire approach to protecting prospects. The Lakers took their foot off the accelerator pedal. Their opponents haven’t been good enough to punish them so far. The Warriors were, and hopefully, reminds the Lakers that games are 48 minutes long.
2. Reliable old
The faces around them may have changed, but Stephen Curry and Draymond Green still perform the exact same endgame dagger game they’ve abused since 2015. The Curry-Green pick-and-roll is virtually unstoppable. , and as Monday proved, that remains true even without Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson spacing the floor for it.
The logic is simple. There are only so many ways to defend a pick and roll. Double Curry off the screen and Green gets a 4v3. He’ll either make the right pass or score an easy layup, like he did here.
Switch action and Curry gets a shift against a big man. Yes, even Anthony Davis qualifies on this transfer, a cousin of the traditional pick-and-roll.
There is no answer here. Defend it traditionally and Curry goes into a pull-up 3. You can’t blitz and you can’t change. Most of the time this game will give a free kick. All you can do on the defensive is hope they are missing. The Warriors didn’t do it on Monday. Even without Durant and Thompson, the Warriors have the same knockout as ever.
3. Time is running out on the Lakers’ positive variance
The Lakers are a great defensive team, but one that had very good luck early in the season. Opponents were shooting just 35% of the 3-point open, entering the league’s fifth-lowest on Monday, and just 33.9% of 3 overall, the fourth-lowest figure in the NBA. Generally speaking, defenses don’t have much control over whether or not opponents make their 3-pointers, especially the open ones, but so far this season the Lakers have been profiting from the fact that they don’t. were not.
It hasn’t totally changed yet. The Warriors only shot 12 of 37 from deep. But eight of those bombs came in the second half, which the Lakers lost by 18 points. Factor in their own 9 of 29 performance behind the arc, and the Lakers’ loss seems straightforward enough. The Warriors pulled off their shots in the second half and the Lakers didn’t. If the Lakers had played at full speed, they could have mustered the three points needed to win the game in regulation time. The Lakers have beaten the odds so far this season, but they can’t do it when they’re also fighting.
4. Golden State starters hesitate again
The 19-year-old Warriors delay was another page in a story Steve Kerr refuses to rewrite. Golden State’s starting five, Curry, Green, Andrew Wiggins, James Wiseman and Kelly Oubre Jr., were up 45 points in 126 minutes before Monday’s game. Suffice it to say, these numbers don’t look better now. Meanwhile, the six Warriors reserves who spoke had a positive point differential. In essence, each range except the starting five is working for the Warriors right now.
There is a simple solution here. Simply 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. Yes, that could reduce the enormous work these safeguards are doing, but Golden State cannot expect to overcome 19 point deficits every night. The best teams don’t rely on huge returns, they avoid needing it in the first place. So far, Kerr seems to disagree, and Monday likely reinforced his decision to stay with the same opening group.
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