Both the Golden State Warriors and the Los Angeles Lakers entered the All Star break with some momentum, so Thursday’s showdown coming out of the break promised to be interesting. That is, until it was announced that LeBron James would miss the game. Nevertheless, the Lakers sans-LeBron took down both the mighty Boston Celtics and the scorching New York Knicks recently. And Anthony Davis suited up, the same Davis who blocked the Warriors offense into the offseason last playoffs.
When on song, Davis is an all world defender, particularly with his rim protection. Opposing teams shoot 5.6 percentage points worse at the rim when Davis is on the floor than when he’s off it, one of the best marks for big men per Cleaning the Glass. And sure enough, Davis notched three blocks against the Warriors on Thursday.
That Golden State came away with the win owed much to how they dealt with Davis away from the rim though. In the first quarter, with Davis defending Draymond Green, the Warriors went to the Draymond-Steph Curry pick and roll. While not in a deep drop by any means, Davis was still far from the level of the screen. That is death against the greatest shooter of all time.
Poor Austin Reaves did his best, but against a screener as canny as Draymond, there was little he could do without some help. Here, Draymond flips his screen and takes Reaves completely out of the play:
Going back to the first clip, look at where Davis is in relation to Steph coming off the screen:
That’s just too much space for Steph. One naturally wonders why Davis wasn’t blitzing Steph, or at least coming up to the level of the screen. That Lakers would try that in the second half (more on that in a bit), but one imagines it was to keep the other three Lakers from being put in a scramble situation behind the play if Steph successfully got the ball to Draymond in a 4-on-3 situation. Draymond has notched countless reps in those situations over the years and they have generally not ended well for the opposition.
Of course, the Lakers were willing to bring Davis higher up when the screener was a less accomplished playmaker than Draymond. Like Kevon Looney, for instance:
Look at Davis’ positioning here…
…and compare it to his positioning in the first clip where Draymond was the screener. For a sense of how far he is/isn’t dropping, note where his back foot is in relation to the free throw circle.
As it happened, Looney scored, but it required him to maneuver through multiple Laker bodies and evade Davis coming in for the block. The Lakers will take their chances with Looney putting the ball on the floor. That’s a tough basket that the Lakers will live with most times.
So the Lakers knew their opposition personnel when adapting their defensive schemes. Nonetheless, with the initial scheme against the Draymond-Steph pick and roll not working, Coach Darvin Ham had Davis play higher up on the screen in the third quarter. The Warriors were ready for this and Steph wasted little time in putting the ball on the floor and driving past Davis all the way to the hoop.
At the risk of belaboring the point, compare Davis’ positioning there in relation to how he defended the action in the first quarter.
He is much higher up to deter the pull up three.
The Lakers weren’t done making adjustments. Coach Ham switched up defensive assignments in the second half, putting Davis on Jonathan Kuminga and D’Angelo Russell on Draymond. The logic was sound: Should the Warriors try to involve Davis in action away from the rim, Kuminga isn’t as versed in the dark arts of screening as Draymond is, and also a less capable playmaker when Steph gets off the ball. And the Lakers could switch the Draymond-Steph pick and roll, with Russell taking Steph and the Lakers getting the added bonus of Davis lurking on the back line where he is most deadly as a defender.
But the Warriors were ready with a counter again. Instead of going back to the Draymond-Steph pick and roll, they tapped into their deadly inverted pick and roll with Kuminga as the ball handler and Steph coming up to screen.
Shooters make for deadly screeners, when the spirit moves them, and the greatest shooter of all time is also an underrated screener. Davis was behind the play and Kuminga barreling to the rim with a head of steam is tough for a scrambling defense.
On the following possession, the Warriors went back to the same set and got a Draymond corner three out of it.1
Draymond is shooting 50% on corner threes this season per Cleaning the Glass. Kuminga made the right read there when the help came from the strong side.
Sticking with his substitution patterns, Coach Steve Kerr put Klay Thompson in for Kuminga soon after the play above. The Lakers were understandably hesitant to now have Davis chase Thompson around screens and lurk on the perimeter, so they reverted to having Davis guard Draymond.
But the Warriors weren’t done with their counters. When they found Davis cross-matched onto Andrew Wiggins, they caught Davis napping.
NBA action takes place at lightning speed. Even if Davis was ready to play up on a screen set for a ball handler, he was still defaulting to dropping back towards the rim when not involved in action on the ball. The Warriors exploited that by having Wiggins set a wide pin down away from the ball and gaining more space for Steph than he should ever be afforded.
LeBron’s absence notwithstanding, Golden State proved that they had the answers for the Lakers on Thursday night.
Or nearly the same set; where it was Andrew Wiggins vacating the strong side corner the first go around, it was Brandin Podziemski the second time.