Two ways the Warriors can slow down Anthony Davis in critical Game 2
SAN FRANCISCO — The Warriors run, the Lakers bruise.
This Western Conference semifinal matchup is not just a meeting of two California rival teams, but the ultimate clash of styles. Anthony Davis is at the center of that clash, literally.
If the Warriors hope to overcome a 1-0 series deficit, they’ll have to figure out how to beat Davis, the Lakers’ 6-foot-10 center, instead of working around him. Golden State was largely deferential to Davis in Game 1, letting him camp in the paint, waiting for the perimeter defenders to funnel Warriors to him there on defense. It deterred drives to the rim with any consistency and prompted the Warriors to take 53 3-pointers.
Davis beat the Warriors nearly single-handedly on both ends with 30 points, 23 rebounds and four blocks.
Can the Warriors get Davis out of his comfort zone? Here’s a look at a few options.
Make him move
Davis played 44 minutes in Tuesday’s game — and the general sense around the Warriors’ locker room is he might not be able to repeat that every game, especially with games this series being played every other day.
“It’s a long series,” Jordan Poole said postgame Tuesday. “We got a lot of guys like me, Steph (Curry) and Klay (Thompson), who move so much off the ball and have good pace and we’re all in good shape. We can use it as an advantage if they want to play the running game with us.”
The Warriors erased a 14-point fourth-quarter deficit by going small with those three shooters on the floor alongside Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green by out-running Davis down the stretch. The 14-0 run came with just under six minutes remaining as the Warriors scored in a variety of ways. That included a pair of Curry layups — one in the half-court with Green blocking Davis to clear a path — along with a game-tying 3-pointer.
Pulling Davis out of the paint to defend would be a potential added bonus to going small in Game 2, too. The increased spacing may open up bigger lanes to drive to the paint.
Davis looked especially tired during a sequence around the four-minute mark when Wiggins collected two consecutive offensive rebounds without much interference from Davis. The Warriors just couldn’t convert either opportunity into points.
Lakers head coach Darvin Ham pushed back at the idea that Davis — who the Lakers load-managed in the regular season — couldn’t handle a heavy workload in the postseason.
“This is what load management is about,” he told reporters. “… We have to manage their loads throughout the regular season in order for us to push them a little further during this time of year. Postseason, everything is at its peak. You have to pare down the rotation and push the big dogs.”
The Warriors may think otherwise.
Draymond Green’s defense
A large portion of Davis’ points in Game 1 came on first-half jump shots. For the most part, Golden State’s defense ceded those low-percentage jumpers to Davis hoping to take away higher-percentage opportunities in the paint. And he found some rhythm there early with Green, the Warriors’ best Davis defender, on the bench with three fouls before the midway point of the second quarter.
But Davis, notably, went 1-for-5 in the fourth quarter. Exhaustion may have something to do with that. But the team should be encouraged by the way Green contested Davis’ last three shots of the game, all of which were misses — a fadeaway jumper, a floater and a potential put-back off an offensive board.
Green may be a few inches shorter than Davis, but he is one of the league’s better defenders against the Lakers’ star. After Tuesday’s game, he admitted that foul trouble got him out of his defensive rhythm. He said his goal for Game 2 will be to turn up the aggression, force more of those jumpers and hope they don’t go in.
“I think I allowed the three fouls to kind of take me out of a rhythm and never really found it again,” Green said. “So just got to stay out of foul trouble. It’s kind of been a theme with me. Just got to stop fouling.”