Hoops Tonight - Lakers-Warriors Reaction: Steph Curry dominates, Golden State blows out LA

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to fifteen minutes tonight on Lakers Warriors. You guys know the joke before we get started. Subscribe to a brand new YouTube channel. I mean a lot to me if you guys take a second to scroll down and hit that subscribe button. Don't forget about our podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops tonight. It's also really helpful if you guys leave a rating in a review

on that front. Don't forget about my Twitter feed at Underscore Jason LT where I leave film threads in the morning as well as show announcements and the lastome not least, keep dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. We have a mailbag that we're gonna be doing in a few shows here over the course of the next week or so. All Right, Bucks and basketball, So this is an interesting game.

This matchup is is an interesting one between these two teams because there's been a game plan that the Lakers have used over the years over Golden against Golden State. This has worked pretty well, which is basically involved a lot of ball pressure and top locking and basically forcing the Warriors guards to, especially in their off ball actions, to not be able to use their screens and try to cut back door into Anthony Davis. The gist of it is is the Lakers know that they don't have

excellent perimeter defenders right now. They want to leave Anthony Davis in the paint as much as possible, and there's a push in a poll that takes place in basketball games surrounding that perimeter dynamic.

of this game. One of the things that I talked about earlier this season as to pertain to Lakers is because they don't have a guard that can really defend and also is a plus offensive player, like they've got Cam Reddish who's a guy who can defend but is a is a bad offensive player. They have Max Christie who can defend, but he's super young and has a lot of ups and downs like all young players do, so obviously is not a guy you can kind of

rely on a ton of big spots. What is up happening is Austin Reeves has to be your primary point of attack guy on guards and all of you guys who listen to the show who play basketball and have the ball in your hands, you know the feeling when you walk on the court. There's a feeling you have when you step into a game, whether it's a pickup game, a men's leag game, a high school game, a college game,

whatever it is. When you walk on the floor, you look at the guy across from you, especially if it's against guys that you've played against a lot in the past. You look across and you either go, this guy's tough, He's gonna make me work hard tonight, I'm gonna have

to bring my a game. Or do you look at Austin You're like, this dude has no chance, and you just walk into the game feeling comfortable and confident, knowing that you are going to bust his ass because he has no hoping of guarding you, and I promise you. And Steph Curry walks into a game and he knows, Wait, Austin Reeves is guarding me for forty eight minutes.

And like you could tell at the beginning of this game, the Lakers were sitting Anthony Davis in a little bit more of a deeper drop and they were asking Steph to or Austin to fight over the top of these screens, and it just was way too easy for Steph Curry to get separation from Austin, either through using the first screen and setting his man up for the screen or the Draymond's really good at rescreening, where like you set the first screen and Austin does a good job fighting

over the top and then you just quickly pivot around at it again because it's such an aggressive defensive move to get over it's hard to reset to then do it again going in the opposite direction. He was getting wherever he wanted to. You gotta remember Steph Curry is good at getting separation and pick and roll against.

on to Steph. You saw that more as the game progressed, and then also just having to come higher out into his from his drop coverage up to the level above the screen at the screen and then sometimes even above the level of the screen. And then that's when that starts to open up all of the other problems on the back line. As soon as you bring that second defender up to Steph. The Warriors offense is designed to capitalize on that, whether it's through hitting the roll man

and going to the rim. Tray Jackson Davis did an amazing job, especially there in the second quarter at rolling

hard to the rim. This is one of the most important things for a big guy to do, especially an athlete, and this is kind of what Jackson Jackson Hayes does for the Lakers, where it's like, as soon as you get that dribble handoff off or that ball screen or whatever it is, you need to release and roll hard because there's an opportunity there if you can get ahead of steam, especially against a team like the Lakers that without Lebron James and without some of their other forwards

like Jared Vanderbilt, they don't have a ton of backline size, and so then what ends up happening is if Anthony Davis is away from the rim, it opens up just a huge slew of problems, whether it's you know, Trace Jackson Davis or Draymond Green rolling hard to the rim for layups, or it's like just shoot the damn ball and you're gonna end up getting an offensive rebound.

or on the defensive glass. And the Warriors did a great job of capitalizing on that issue for the Lakers all night long.

but they're cliche for a reason. And one of the big ones is playing with force and something that Darvin Ham talks about a lot as it pertains to the Lakers, and like it is a kind of like an abstract concept in the sense that it like like it's so broad and it covers so many different things, but there's some reality to it in the sense that the team that plays with more physical force on both ends of the floor tends to have a lot more success in

every phase of the game. So for instance, like whether it's closing out on a shooter, when you close out with real force, you can force Lakers into miss three is the way they did tonight. They shot what twenty nine percent from three? They were four for seventeen in the first half. Right, you can chase them off the line and force them to drive into your help side

defense right on the ball. Like, there was a stretch there for about a quarter and a half where the Lakers five out offense was generating a lot of really good looks, and the big problem was that the Warriors were getting into rotation too easily. They weren't doing a good enough job fighting over the top of screens, they weren't doing a good enough job on their closeouts, and so the Lakers were just driving and kicking them and

getting good looks in their five out sets. But right around that middle of the second quarter stretch there, the Warriors just dialed it up a little bit in the level of force they were bringing to the situation all of a sudden, you know, like Klay Thompson, Clay Thompson had a really nice shift guarding D'Angelo Russell in the middle of the second quarter, where he was physical and was bumping him off his line and not letting him get downhill as easily. And then you can kind of

put two and two together from there. If Clay beats d Lo over the top of the screen and stops him from getting to his spot, that stops the help from coming in. If that stops the help from coming in, that stops you from getting into rotation. And even when

you are in rotation, they're shorter, easier rotations. And when you make those rotations sharper, you can force them off the line, force them into missus, force them into turnovers, and then the next phase of the force from there, once you've defended, once you have the defensive rebound, the next phase of that force is the transition pushes. And

that's how they blew the game open. The Lakers were literally winning this game with three and a half minutes left in the second quarter, and next thing you know, you look up at halftime and they're down eleven. That's the wave of force that came from Golden State at

that at that end of the second quarter, stretch. It was excellent defense leading to transition pushes, and then even in the half court, there was a lot more playing out of the post, a lot of Jonathan coming like Jonathan Cominica had a you know, one of the things I've been talking about with Johnathan Kamina is like teams are starting to bring help after he puts the ball on the floor. Again, this is what happens with player development.

First you kick everyone's ass. Then everyone goes, oh, this dude' kicking it everyone's ass. We got to find a way to stop him. Well, it looks like he can be a little bit inconsistent as a shooter, and it looks like he struggles sometimes reading the defense when second defender comes over. So now you're seeing lots of teams. This stretches back to the Jazz and Clippers games last week. Now you're starting to see teams send that second defender.

When Jonathan Kaminga has the ball early in the game, as Austin reeves on the block, tries to go through him and sees Anthony Davis there. Tries to challenge Anthony Davis at the ram and gets blocked right, learns his lesson posts up Austin Reeves on the left block. Later on in the second quarter, this time sees the double team coming and makes a great kickout pass so Brandon Pitzemski on the right wing and he knocks it down and.

easy baskets around the paint. I didn't think it was a coincidence that the second, third, and fourth leading scorers for the Warriors in this game were Andrew Wiggins, Tray Jackson Davis, and Jonathan kaminga almost all in transition pushes, attacking the offensive glass in the post and driving closeouts. The Lakers are fourth in points in the paint this year. The Warriors are twenty sixth in points in the paint

this year. To this point in the season, that has not been a part of the Warriors' identity, but I'd love to see it become a large, like a larger part of the Warrior's identity as we get further and further into the season. I thought I was really really

impressed down the roster. I thought Tray Jackson Davis again that shift that he had there in the middle of the first half, but I thought he just changed the tone of the game just by bringing that those hard rolls to the ram and just running the floor in transition. It's a good formula for the Warriors. Again, wave after

wave of athleticism around Steph. That to me is the next step for them, because again, like you're gonna see, I think this team's dialed in from the standpoint of effort and energy and focus and belief in what they can do. I think we saw that before the deadline, right, like what they win eight of their last eleven I think going into the going into the All Star break right, so like they were already trending in that right direction.

They're in a good position in the standings in the sense that like they're gonna get some shot at the playoffs, whether it's a play in birth or it's something a little bit higher. It's more important now to try to build out a formula that can actually succeed when they get into the playoffs and we know what Steph can do. We know what Steph can do. That's not what I'm

getting at here. I'm getting at everything around that. You've got to find a formula on the offensive end of the floor that brings support to what Steph can do and to me, when you actually look down the roster in the same way like when you look at the roster for the Lakers, it's like you see Lebron and a D and it's like offensive skill is their next kind of you know, trait that kind of pops off

the screen. It's like Austin Reeve's pretty damn skill Danseel Russell pretty damn skilled, Spencer, Dinwiddie pretty damn skilled, Rio Chamura pretty damn skilled. Like Torrian Prince for a bench wing, pretty damn skilled, right, But it's like that's the athleticism is not really their thing. And then you look at the Warriors roster and it's like man Andrew Wiggins, Jonathan Kaminga, you know, Draymond Green obviously is just like a super

mobile big that can do a ton of stuff. And then what Gary Payton brings to the table when he's there, even guys like Moses Moody, they can bring wave after wave of athleticism on the wing. That is a legitimate roster strength for them, and I just want to see them lean into that a lot more down the stretch of the season. On the Lakers front, again, I thought their offense was really good for one and a half quarters and then they cooled off.

like real rim pressure. Again, Like a lot of people are off the scent of the Lakers as a paint attacking team because they don't drive the ball to the basket a ton, But they don't realize that that's not the only way you can get in around the basket. You can get in around the basket through hard rolls to the rim and pick and roll. You can get around the basket by cutting to the basket and get

around the basket by driving. In transition, you can get around the basket by posting up a lot, and like, there are a lot of different ways to get in there. I have Celtics fans that are like, why do you keep saying we don't like we don't score in the paint at all. We're one of the biggest post up teams in the league, And it's like posting up is just one way to get in the paint. The Celtics in total don't score in the paint enough. Lakers are

fourth in paint points per one hundred possessions. That's the strength of Theirs because they have so many different ways to get the basketball into the paint. That's exactly what I'm advocating for the Warriors to do more of, right, But Lebron James is such an important part of that

for the Lakers, especially in their five out offense. They've been using him so much more in like off ball situations, whether he's like curling off of an off ball screen and like just bring in like a freight train cut to the basket or out of the post, like we talked about a lot actual screen and roll situations. In transition, Lebron just kind of brings another wave to the Lakers paint attack, and I thought they really missed that tonight. And honestly, like, I mean, here's the thing. I asked

a couple of people behind the scenes. I'm like, what's going on with Lebron? His ankles more or less fine, He's just being cautious with it. But I don't necessarily understand the idea behind not playing him against the Warriors and then turning around and playing him against.

being up one to being down eleven. That's how quickly it can change for you if you don't have the ability to control that end of the floor. And like again, the Lakers have good defensive personnel. Their good defensive personnel

is just not their offensive personnel. And so as a result, they kind of have like this issue where it's like they can throw lineups out there where they have some athletes like Okay, here's Cam Rednis, here's you know, Max Christie, Here's Jared Vanderbilt when he's healthy, and here's Lebron James and Anthony Davis and it's like, okay, we can guard,

but then they really struggle to score the basketball. We saw that when they went to that bizarre starting lineup there in the in the middle of the season, right, But then they can go to these offensively minded groups and it's like here's Austin Reeves and here's Dangel Russell and here's where we had Chamura and it's like they

could score, but now they can't guard. And so it's gonna be on you know, not just the stars of the team, but also Darvin Ham to try to figure out over these last twenty five games, how do we bridge the gap. How do we find lineup groupings that have a combination of perimeter personnel that compete on the compete defensively, but also have the ability to kind of maintain some of the flow in their five out offense.

And it's gonna be a challenge because that was a specific issue that we knew the Lakers had to deal with right after the Nuggets series last year, and Rob Polinkett did not address it over the summer, and he did not address it over the deadline, and so the personnel is the personnel. They're gonna have to find a way to bridge that gap. But right now, I mean, both of these teams have a long way to go

to get to real bona fide championship contention. But you know, there's a there's a formula for both of them that are in front of them there. They just have to find that formula and continue to build it out here over the last fourth of the season. All Right, guys, that is all I have for today. As I said, tomorrow morning, we're gonna break down. There's MAVs Sons is a big one that I want to hit.