Lakers Survive The Smaller Warriors

Really the game shouldn't have been as close as it was. The Golden State Warriors, thanks in part to rookie phenom Stephen Curry, 29-pts, gave the bigger stronger Los Angeles Lakers a run for their money in Oakland last night. The thrilling back and forth game came down to the last 8.6 seconds with the Lakers leading by three and the Warriors with the ball.

Curry shoots a three and misses. Monta Ellis rebounds, runs back to behind the three point arc and shoots in desperation while falling away. The ball does one of those suspense filled slow motion follies that sometimes happens in basketball. It hits the front of the rim, bounces up into the air, comes down and pounces strongly two times on the back of the rim, then innocently falls away from the basket. Lakers Win.

I believe every eye in the Arena thought that ball would fall straight threw the net off one of the pounces and trigger utter pandemonium in the stands. Granted, the shot wouldn't have won it for the Warriors, but taking the defending champion Lakers into overtime on such a dramatic shot would give Warriors fans something that nine straight losses to the Lakers hasn't; hope.

Final Score
Lakers 124
Warriors 121



From Adam Lauridsen's Warriors Fan Blog "Fast Break"

• Chris Hunter may have had his finest game as a pro. He moved beautifully without the ball, receiving countless dump-off passes from Curry. He tangled all night long with Andrew Bynum, winning his fair share of the in-the-paint wrestling matches. Most importantly, he did a nice job clogging up the middle — keeping Bynum, Gasol and Odom from too many point-blank looks at the basket. It wasn’t a graceful or multidimensional performance, but his raw hustle gave the Warriors exactly what they needed.

• Stephen Curry’s bad habit of picking up fouls when he can ill afford them may be a blessing in disguise. By picking up those early fouls, he almost always forces Nelson to send him to the bench for a break. That break allows him to hit the fourth quarter with fresher legs. The confidence Curry is building in these close games will be invaluable for his development as a leader. For the second game in a row Ellis and Curry seemed to work well together. Ellis couldn’t hit anything, but Curry used the space created by the attention Ellis commands to run some nice two-man games. A lot of the lanes to the basket Curry exploited with his passes to Hunter and Maggette were created by the defense sagging over on Ellis. Here’s hoping the more they play together, the more they learn to build on each others’ strengths.

• Although Curry got the late-game glory, I credit Monta Ellis for getting the Warriors back into the game. With two-and-a-half minutes to go, the Warriors were down by 11 and settling for jump shots. Ellis then took the ball to the basket and scored. Next time down he found Hunter for an easy basket. A few plays later, he robs Kobe to set up his gap-closing three pointer. His final shot didn’t go down, but it was Ellis’ aggressive play at both ends of the court in the final minutes that allowed the Warriors to claw back from a double-digit deficit.

• Don Nelson gambled with the small team and nearly got away with it. By playing only one big for the final stretch, Nelson essentially bet that his shooters could off-set any second chance points through their ability to stretch the court and hit threes. It looked like it would backfire miserably as the Lakers started pulling away — until the Warriors started connecting again from long range, pulling themselves back into contention. It’s a strategy that hangs on some long odds, but given the already poor chances of containing Gasol, Bynum and Odom, it wasn’t a crazy approach. But against less dominant low-post teams (say, Portland), the risk-reward calculation makes the strategy a much uglier proposition.