Both the Lakers and the Warriors put on a show and excelled at their respective styles of play, but it was the Lakers who won out in the end, holding off Golden State 117-112 to take a 1-0 series lead and steal home court advantage Tuesday night.
The Lakers bludgeoned the paint in this one, relentlessly working their actions to get the ball inside to threaten a Warriors defense that is stout, but lacks the type of size and shot-blocking the Lakers saw in the first round. The Lakers nearly doubled up the Warriors inside, outscoring them 54-28 in the paint and also working to draw fouls inside to earn 29 trips to the foul line (making 25) while the Warriors were only able to get to the line six times (making five).
While it was a team-wide effort to establish an interior presence, the Lakers were led by Anthony Davis. AD scored 30 points on 11-19 shooting from the field and 8-8 from the free throw line, grabbed 23 rebounds, dished out five assists, and blocked four shots. He’s the first Laker since Shaq in 2004 to have a 30/20 game in the playoffs and joined a list that includes O’Neal, Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to ever accomplish those numbers with the Lakers.
Gashing the Warriors with little runners and floaters, turnaround and face-up jumpers, and strong finishes inside, the Warriors had few answers for an aggressive AD who was looking for his own offense throughout the entire game. And when AD wasn’t looking to score himself, he was moving the ball on to open teammates, leveraging the attention he was drawing to help set them up for makable shots.
While Davis and his teammates hunted interior shots, the Warriors did what they do best and tried to establish the terms of engagement on the perimeter. Using the Lakers’ defensive strategy of laying off Kevon Looney and Draymond Green defensively against them, Golden State used both players to set screens and work in dribble hand-off actions around the arc to free up their shooters.
The Warriors leveraged this space to get off 53 attempts from behind the arc, making 21 of them (39.6%). Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, and Jordan Poole became the first trio of teammates to ever hit six or three pointers each. Poole (21 points, 7-15 shooting) and Thompson (25 points, 9-25 shooting) were especially potent in the first half, keeping the Warriors offense buzzing with the long ball, while Curry (27 points, 10-24 shooting) did much of his damage later in the game, hitting a flurry of shots that spurred the Warriors late comeback that tied things up with under two-minutes left in the game.
Despite this level of potent shooting, however, the Lakers were able to take leads into halftime and then push out their margin to double digits in the 2nd half due to their own offensive prowess, with several players stepping up to complement AD’s big night.
LeBron did not shoot the ball as efficiently as he normally might, but he still added a double-double with 22 points (9-24 shooting, 1-8 on threes) to go along with 11 rebounds. LeBron relied more on his jump shooting in this game, and hit several key long two pointers mixed in with good finishes around the paint via drives, post ups, and cuts.
In the backcourt, the Lakers got excellent performances from both D’Angelo Russell and Dennis Schröder as well. Carrying over some momentum from Game 6 vs. Memphis, D-Lo proved to be a tough shot-maker again, scoring 19 points on 9-19 shooting, with several of those looks coming against tight defense. The biggest bucket was his last, a critical late-game leaning bank shot against excellent defense that snapped a 14-0 Warriors run that lasted over four minutes to break the aforementioned tie-game that Curry led them to.
Schröder, meanwhile, did most of his work on a combination of drives, mid-range jumpers, and getting to the foul line. Like Russell, Dennis scored 19 points, but on 5-10 shooting from the field and 9-10 shooting at the stripe. Using his quickness and change of pace, Dennis created shots both in isolation and coming off screens to get the separation he needed to get his shots off.
Lastly, while the offensive games and explosiveness of both teams was on full display, the story of this game cannot be told without crediting the Lakers defense. While the Warriors were excellent in that aforementioned late-game run, the Lakers held the Warriors to 40.6% shooting from the field and really held them down on their shots inside the arc.
Jarred Vanderbilt was wonderful chasing Steph Curry around, denying him touches, and then contesting his shots well whenever he ventured inside the arc. Dennis was also great with his ball pressure and general relentlessness in getting around screens and contesting shots all over the perimeter. And, as he has been all playoffs, AD was monstrous in defending the paint, blocking and altering shots whenever the opposition tested him inside.
And with that type of two-way performance, the Lakers were able to get off on the right foot and grab that 1-0 lead. The series continues on Thursday where the Lakers will try to steal one more before heading back home to Los Angeles.
