With the game on the line in Game 4, the Lakers repeatedly targeted Steph Curry to great success to take a 3-1 series lead against the Warriors.
For most of Monday’s Game 4, Steph Curry tore through the Lakers defense with a barrage of pick and rolls. His triple-double was emblematic of the responsibility the Warriors placed on him offensively.
But one of the beauties of basketball is that it’s a game that requires all players to play both offense and defense. And the Lakers really made Steph Curry play defense in the fourth quarter.
LeBron James has lots and lots of experience playing against the Warriors in the playoffs. His bread and butter when everything was on the line was targeting Curry defensively. For all the brilliance of the two players in their respective games, one of them is 6’2” and 185 pounds and one of them is 6’9” and 250 pounds.
The Lakers and LeBron had not gone to this well much at all up to the fourth quarter, largely out of a lack of necessity. In the only other close game between the two sides, Anthony Davis was utterly dominant in Game 1 and the Lakers focused on going to that well.
But with the Lakers struggling offensively in Game 4, LeBron and the Lakers had a pretty one-track mind. Bring Steph into ball screen actions with LeBron and make plays from there.
The result wasn’t always getting Steph switched onto LeBron, nor did it always necessarily end with LeBron making the decisive play whether in the form of an assist or basket. This also was not a foreign concept to the Warriors of teams targeting Steph, and players like Klay Thompson and Andrew Wiggins — who have been around a while and knew how to react — did enough pre-switching before Curry could get to LeBron.
But the gameplan boiled down to bringing the player Steph was guarding to LeBron, setting a screen and going from there. The few deviations featured Lonnie Walker taking Steph on himself at times, but with the same premise of going after Golden State’s weakest and smallest defender, who also happens to be their best offensive player, and making him work relentlessly on the defensive end.
