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The Golden State Warriors are the hottest team in the NBA as they are currently on a three-game winning streak, which I’m pretty sure no other team has done throughout the season. .
Today, we are avoiding the traditional preview and instead focus on the Warriors’ opponent, the Los Angeles Lakers.
You know all about the Lakers: They have LeBron James, they’re the defending champions, Anthony Davis is injured, and the Warriors beat them earlier this year. But to tell you even more about the team all Dubs fans love to hate, I sat down with my colleague Harrison Faigen, known affectionately to SB Nation as the “Spike Lee of the Lakers”.
In addition to carrying three vials of Lakers exceptionalism in every brightly colored Lakers outfit, Harrison is the manager of our Lakers sister site, Silver Screen and Roll.
So I chose his brain to see how the Lakers fared ahead of tonight’s game, which takes place at 5:00 p.m. PT on ESPN.
Q: The Lakers have been good, but not dominant. Are they keeping equipment for the playoffs, or is there growth needed if they want to repeat?
Harrison: I think it’s totally fair to say that the Lakers are saving something for the playoffs, but maybe not in the way most would associate the defending champions. This team was actually beating just about every newcomer earlier in the season, although they seem to only try for around 18 minutes in each game, and despite their recent struggles and a lot of panic about their “lack of rim protector ‘have always – as of this writing – displayed the best defensive efficiency in the league.
Having said that, I think it’s also fair to say that they have a bit of room to grow, and whatever problems they’ve encountered aren’t just due to effort or to injuries. They’ve been the worst 3-point shooting team in the NBA for half the season at this point, and their overall offense ranks in the bottom half of the league. Some of that will improve in the playoffs. They entered last year’s playoffs shooting the second worst percentage from deepest in the league in their last 15 games, so they’re hot and cold, and when LeBron James and Anthony Davis get the ball rolling at a higher level and start creating even more open shots – and the coaching staff are coming up with a specific game plan for each opponent more than the more vanilla strategies they’ve stuck to at this point – things will get better.
It will depend on health and if they can find ways to make this list fit a little better than it has so far. The talent is there to repeat itself, but oddly for a team with LeBron, they have some offensive stuff to figure out.
Q: What were the Lakers like without Anthony Davis?
Harrison: Wrong. Sorry, did you want more than that? (Editor’s note: honestly, no. We can just leave that up to “the Lakers are bad.”)
Seriously, Davis’ value was fully on display during his absence. Despite all the talk that the Lakers were better in numbers when he was seated than when he played last season, his absence has shown that the eye test is more accurate in showing what he is giving to. this team.
It’s not just Davis’ defense, however. Without him and Dennis Schröder, the Lakers were in a serious shooting deficit. During the bubble, Davis showed he can be one of the league’s deadliest isolation scorers, big enough to shoot smaller players like folding chairs, and quick enough to easily beat traditional bigs. dribbling. They’ll need this guy if they’re going to go anywhere this year (duh), and that’s why they will surely continue to slow down as he recovers from his Achilles and calf injuries.
Q: How do you think a playoff game between these two teams would go?
Harrison: Assuming both sides are healthy? Lakers in five. Stephen Curry is dangerous enough to win a game at the Warriors (Editor’s note: Harrison has trouble counting, I’m pretty sure he meant ‘four’) and Draymond Green will sometimes come up with shenanigans to throw the Lakers out of their game, but this team is a heavyweight when they shoot all the cylinders, and I’m just not sure the Warriors have enough guys to slow them down. . I know the Warriors have been better than expected defensively, but I’m just confident the Lakers will find some staff-related holes to break through, and they’ve got enough guys to harass Steph to at least make the game difficult for him, even s ‘he averages 30.
Q: Should LeBron James be considered the MVP’s favorite?
Harrison: My answer would have been ‘yes’ if you had asked me this question in the first Lakers / Warriors game, but for now, I would definitely say no. That stretch without Davis and Schröder, right or wrong, is going to be used as a bane on his resume at the end of the season, and with how poorly the Lakers have played for the last 10 or so games, I imagine Joel Embiid ( at the very least) has exceeded it for now.
Does that mean I don’t think LeBron can win? Absolutely not. His production has (mostly) been excellent this season overall, and if he keeps moving forward, he’ll have the scoring stats needed to be in the conversation. The Lakers will probably have to move up in the rankings if they really want to win, but I think if those things are in place there seems to be a pretty good chunk of the media out there who wanted to preemptively declare him MVP. year because of the tale that he hasn’t won the last few years, and especially after how the playoffs went last year for him and Giannis Antetokounmpo. LeBron knew who his real audience was when he spoke about how bored it was that so few media had voted for him, I’ll tell you.
If the Lakers don’t get along, that won’t be enough, but I think some voters want to enjoy it on the exit, judging by a large chunk of the public, which I’ve seen from insiders voting. on this stuff.
Q: Should the NBA be doing more to create a competitive balance, or are you at peace with the idea that you will never be able to measure up against a market giant like the Utah Jazz?
Harrison: It’s going to be hard. The little mom-and-pop Lakers store was picked and overlooked at every turn over the past year. Charles Barkley guaranteed they would lose in the first round. Several pundits believed the Rockets would beat them in the second. The trend continued in the finals of the Western Conference, but the courageous underdog Lakers persisted again. After their recent loss to the juggernaut Jazz, people are once again ruling them out at their peril. Nevertheless, #WeBelieve
(Editor’s note: this section has never been erased with me and I invite you to shame Harrison relentlessly in the comments section)
Q: Who did you win this match?
Big thanks to Harrison for showing us all how these adorable underdogs in the NBA’s smallest market do. If you want to stick with the Lakers during the game, or just find a second platform to harass him on for posting this graphic, be sure to give him a follow up (@hmfaigen).
And for those of you looking for my pre-game keys to victory, you can find them at our twitter before the tipoff.
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