Often, it ends with someone else shooting without Curry ever even touching the ball, which is a win for the Lakers no matter how the possession ends. Jarred Vanderbilt is an extremely physical defender who is crowding Curry off ball and tracking him as he runs around screens, and the Lakers are not fooled by a lot of those maze routes that Curry takes. With the advantage the Lakers have on the inside in this series, the Warriors are going to have a tough time winning with Curry scoring three points over two quarters of play.

Curry got hot late, when Steve Kerr finally started letting him create for himself, and scored 14 points over exactly an eight-minute stretch of the fourth quarter, but it was just a little too late. He didn't score his next point until the seven-minute mark of the third quarter. Stephen Curry scored 10 points in the first quarter. In other words, the Lakers bet that by sagging Davis into the paint and forcing the Warriors to make a ton of 3s, that they could score enough from inside the paint and at the free throw line by being more physical and bigger to win out. That's plus-20 for the Lakers, and plus-five overall, the exact margin of victory. Finally, the Lakers made 25 free throws to Golden State's five. As mentioned, the Lakers won the paint battle by 30 points. That's a 45-point advantage from beyond the arc. All told, the Warriors made 21 triples as a team to the Lakers' six. True to their identity, the Warriors bombed away from deep in Game 1, attempting exactly half their shots from beyond the arc and becoming the first team in playoff history to boast three players (Steph Curry, Klay Thomson and Jordan Poole) with six made 3-pointers each in a single game. Golden State tried to make enough 3-pointers to offset Davis' interior dominance, and they came close. Kevon Looney tallied 23 boards of his own, seven of which were offensive, but this matchup went to Davis, who is just too big and too athletic for Golden State's undersized and athletically inferior frontline.ĭefensively, Davis basically roped off the paint, where the Warriors scored just 24 points to the Lakers' 54. Anthony Davis was dominantĭavis was an absolute monster with 30 points, 23 rebounds, five assists and four blocks. In the previous four, the Warriors have come back to win three of them, including the first-round series against Sacramento and last year's NBA Finals against Boston.īelow are three big takeaways from Game 1. It marks just the fifth time during the Steve Kerr era that the Warriors have lost Game 1 of a playoff series. The Los Angeles Lakers stole Game 1 of their second-round series versus the Golden State Warriors with a 117-112 victory on Tuesday.

Eyewitness by Christopher Davis