BLEECHER REPORT: How Steph Curry and the Warriors can beat the Lakers in Play-In

[Beethoven]

GSW can definitely beat the Lakers Wednesday :

1) Steph is overly motivated to have a historic nite. Media all over is curiously setting him up for it. Don't be surprised if he gets 50+ points.

2) we beat them twice but this isn't the same gsw team as earlier. They are a real playoff team now. They know also how to beat us w AD playing.

3) LeBron still feeling out himself and the games. Especially now after tweaking his ankle again last nite. Remember last year we lost game 1s?
This is even more so.

4) NBA will get great ratings and a great story if they can prop up curry as a hero over the juggernaut Lakers.

5) we shoot cold. You can never trust this laker team to be consistent in shooting throughout the course of the games.

6) GSW is VERY confident and smell blood.

7) we are due for a loss after 5 straight wins.

ARE YOU READING THIS AD AND LEBRON????

[stan francisco]

We’d better NOT under estimate GSW. Steve Kerr is a solid coach. They’re more ready than we are and we’ll be down by ten within the first two minutes if we don’t watch it.

I hope Curry’s great shooting doesn’t shake our shooting confidence into being worse than it already is.

If we can keep him to 40, I’ll be happy.

[Kilroy]

They can definitely beat us, but that's fine, because we can lose this game and still make the playoffs by winning the next one against either SAS or Memphis... I expect it'll be Memphis... And while they're no cake-walk, they should be easier than the Warriors right now...
So yeah, come out fighting and see how it goes but don't kill yourself trying to beat Curry if he's hitting from anywhere on the court.

KCP is great against Curry... Caruso is great against Curry... Schroder has been great against Curry at least 1 time this season...
They have no answer for AD if he's playing like last season... LeBron should get his... And they have no answer for Drummond, or Marc for that matter...

So Frank needs to fight his natural inclination to only focus on how to counter the other teams threats, and focus more on how to maximize our team's miss-matches... If Curry goes for 40, and we minimize the rest of the team and AD goes for 30 and Drummond gets 20, we win... Etc...

[Slava]

I'd be very surprised if we drop this, we got whatever we wanted at the basket in this match up during the regular season and the Warriors lack so much in size that our bigs should be able to feast on second chances and lobs. Even if Curry goes on a tear they have no answer to defend us and their small ball line up fades when you put AD at the 5 and LeBron at 4.

[Freighttrain]

It wouldn't be the end of the world if we lost as we have another shot, but guys it's just one guy. Who else besides Curry can put up buckets? Just double him every time he crosses halfcourt and make the others beat us. We know Curry can hit big shots, but can the rest of their team do that in a pressurized moment? Draymond is also known to show up in the playoffs, but he a terrible shooter, and AD makes Draymond look like a scrub, it's a terrible mismatch. Make them beat us from the outside, as we dominate the paint and double Curry. We should win this pretty handily.

[LAKESHOW]

This is all about Frank and Steve. With the players on the court, there's no comparison. Destruction. Easy win. But a coaching error can ruin everything in a 1 gamer

[Kilroy]

It's also about Lebron, AD and Schroder all showing up to the game... And about Drummond being effective on both ends... And us getting a few 3s to fall from KCP, Caruso, Kuz, THT, Mathews, or McLemore...

Granted, we pretty much have to beat ourselves to lose this game based on the talent comparison, but we've been finding ways of doing just that the last 2 seasons, in some of the bigger games... And like the media loves to point out, LeBron teams sometimes don't show up to the first game of a playoff series...

So I'm not going to call this an easy win... It's a 'should win' but beyond that, I'm going to just wait and see who shows up...

[Spanish_Laker]

Anything can happen, it is just a 1-game series. If we lose, it is totally acceptable since our team has been injured all season long and lacks chemistry and rythm.

[kblo247]

They are 8 partly because of politics. They took off and Steph/DRay both look great because they do not have to play wiseman anymore. Him being gone pretty much let them be great again on both ends.

Draymond is defending 5s and he’s pretty much averaging 7-9 assists, double digit board, and scoring double digits every night again. Steph is going bonkers. And Wiggins is excelling in the role of being Harrison Barnes which is the role they were forcing Oubre into despite him sucking because they had to justify the tax payment.

Kerr pretty much is playing who he wants and his way without the front office gems they wanted getting time like Oubre, Wiseman, and even Paschall. He has a warriors like team and Steph is playing mvp ball easily.

Criticizing Steph is like saying Kobe didn’t deserve his credit for the 06 and 07 teams. Green has essentially been Odom to close the 06 season when Phil said f it I’m moving him to PF and I don’t care about the Mihm and Kwame experiment, and he didn’t have to justify not playing one because Mihm got hurt. Draymond got unlocked like Odom got unlocked. And Wiggins stepped it up like Walton stepped it up

Steph beat both of them on the court Jan 18th. He’s done it once this year.

And really the odds are slim, I’m not saying they have a 50/50 shot. I think they have a 10% shot to win though because there are certain things they can exploit in 1 game.

In 1 game you can exploit Dennis being turnover prone. Heck lebron being turnover prone too as Bron had 5 in that loss this year and Dennis had 3.

In 1 game you can exploit Drummond not being able to check Draymond on the break. You can play hack a Drummond to space and bog a game down and not worry because the team is not a good free throw team.

In 1 game you can exploit THT and Trez being out there together very trip down with a 1/5 pick and roll. Tucker stays lost on team D and Trez has played horrible defensively for a while now.

Say whatever you want about Kerr but he’s a 5x nba champion as a player, he played for pop and Phil, and he’s a 3 time title winning coach who made 5 finals. He’s someone who can exploit things for one game to steal it. He’s not going to stand there and take it like Doc, Pringles, or Stotts.

Now what Frank can do is minimize that and make that 10% smaller. He can play Marc, Kieff, Wes as his vets. He can use Kuzma on Wiggins and beat them up the glass. He can slide AD and Bron to the 4 and 5 to close. He can also have a quick yank for Dennis and Drummond so that Caruso and KCP are out there to minimize weaknesses.

I think the lakers win, but it won’t be a cake walk if Frank doesn’t have a quick yank on some guys.

[BEazy]

Defense has to be the key and minimize the fouling. The old guys from last year are solid, it's the new guys that need to settle down a bit.

[iamworthy]

We need to win this game so LeBron and AD can get some rest.

[dAdo dA dEvil]

Let Steph beat us if we want to win. I doubt he alone could outscore our team. Just don't let anybody else from the warriors have a great scoring night.

[stan francisco]

I’m against Schröder starting. Except against teams with high scoring PGs. So, against GSW, I’d love to see Schröder starting. But only if he attacks Curry as much on offense as Curry will attack him. LBJ therefore needs to include Schröder in the offense so that Curry doesn’t get a rest.

[tamaraw08]

Defense has to be the key and minimize the fouling. The old guys from last year are solid, it's the new guys that need to settle down a bit.

It's a 1 game series so I can see Vogel putting a short leash on new guys like Schroder and Drummond. He will ride with his old horses like Caruso, KCP and even Kieff to establish their defense. It's not a coincidence that Steph is shooting 34.6% from 3 all 3 games this season vs the Lakers.
Dennis must realize that they should maximize their advantages of AD and Lebron leading this team both offense and defense. My main concern would be Draymond,Tozcano-Anderson, Looney, Bazemore playing extra physical that could hurt and/or injure Lebron and AD.

[stan francisco]

If we focus on scoring down low, and can do it at a higher clip than 55%, and keep Curry under 35% we will win this game. Let’s not rely on threes, not even the showtime fastbreaks unless it’s the obvious choice! Slow bang these midgets into remission, don’t force the game into a high tempo that they like. Walk the ball up. Slow ball it, back them down. LBJ and AD at the FT line is a good look in the fourth quarter.

It might take them a game to figure out that we either out run them on a faster fasbreak than any other team, or we slow dance them in a slower halfcourt set than any other team. I like.

[kblo247]

The Lakers most used 5-man lineup this season played 281 minutes together. It's the original starting 5 of Dennis/KCP/Bron/AD/Gasol. They had a +13.2 net rating in those minutes.

[stan francisco]

I’m down for a ten man rotation for this game.

PG: Caruso 24, Schröder 24
SG: Pope 24, THT 24
SF: LBJ 30, Kuzma 18
PF: Davis 30, Harrell 12, Kuzma 6
C: Drummond 24, Harrell 14, Gasol 10

[Beethoven]

I've got the doctor's office jitters today.

I see this as sort of a Game 7 do or die.

I dont want to face Utah in the first round they will rout us out and IF we get past them we see the clippers in the second round. This is not the way to go.


We need to win tonite , that's it.

[iamworthy]

I've got the doctor's office jitters today.

I see this as sort of a Game 7 do or die.

I dont want to face Utah in the first round they will rout us out and IF we get past them we see the clippers in the second round. This is not the way to go.


We need to win tonite , that's it.

On a nervous scale of 0-10, zero being not nervous at all.... I'm at a "negative-1"

I'm not the least bit nervous. If LeBron and AD can't get it done then it's a choke job.

[Jedi32]

Just show up