Lakers vs. Warriors score: Anthony Davis sends dominant message as Los Angeles takes 1-0 series lead

The Los Angeles Lakers stole Game 1 of their second-round series versus the Golden State Warriors with a 117-112 victory on Tuesday. 

It marks just the fifth time during the Steve Kerr era that the Warriors have lost Game 1 of a playoff series. 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. 

Below are three big takeaways from Game 1.

Anthony Davis was dominant

Davis was an absolute monster with 30 points, 23 rebounds, five assists and four blocks. 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. 

Defensively, Davis basically roped off the paint, where the Warriors scored just 24 points to the Lakers’ 54. He blocked shots. Changed shots. And discouraged shots altogether. Golden State tried to make enough 3-pointers to offset Davis’ interior dominance, and they came close.

Which leads us to …

The math game

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. All told, the Warriors made 21 triples as a team to the Lakers’ six. 

That’s a 45-point advantage from beyond the arc. As mentioned, the Lakers won the paint battle by 30 points. That leaves the Warriors at plus-15. Finally, the Lakers made 25 free throws to Golden State’s five. That’s plus-20 for the Lakers, and plus-five overall, the exact margin of victory. 

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. They were right. 

Steph got going too late

Stephen Curry scored 10 points in the first quarter. He didn’t score his next point until the seven-minute mark of the third quarter. 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. 

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. 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. 

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. When Curry finally brought the ball up the court with the intent of creating off the dribble with some momentum and space on his side, it was no accident that he scored nine straight points in the fourth quarter and Golden State’s offense broke loose. 

Kerr hates running offense through Curry as a self creator until he has absolutely no other choice. Like Game 7 against Sacramento, when he put it in Curry’s hands to create from the start and Curry, not coincidentally, hung a 50-ball. 

This is a delicate balance. We’ve seen many a team flame out by burning their creator’s candle too hot for too long. But Kerr has to be willing to put the ball in Curry’s hands sooner. It’s his best way to draw Davis out of the paint, for starters, and it will ensure that Curry gets in rhythm, and stays there.