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Thursday night in the 2023 NBA Playoffs saw a virtual repeat of Wednesday night as the Golden State Warriors crushed the Los Angeles Lakers in a Game 2 that was decided before the fourth quarter began. It was the 16th time in a row in the NBA that a home loser in Game 1 went on to win Game 2 with relative ease.
Game 2 Klay Drops 30
The Warriors shot pretty well in Game 1, but they stepped things up a notch in Game 2 to avoid falling into an 0-2 hole. The Warriors finished 21-of-42 from three with Klay Thompson making eight 3s on his way to 30 points, his best game this postseason.
Golden State finished with 38 assists, tied for the second most in a playoff game in the Steph Curry era. Speaking of Curry, he shined more as a point guard in this game with 12 assists. He scored 20 points.
Draymond Green was one assist shy of a triple-double with 11 points. Jordan Poole only took two 3s in this game and was not much of a factor after his controversial shot decision late in Game 1 with the Warriors down 3 points.
But in this game, the Warriors were just the better team all around, collecting 15 more rebounds than the Lakers despite what was considered a size disadvantage.
Anthony Davis Is Invisible (Again)
The rightful attention in this series is on Anthony Davis, who needs to be great for the Lakers to win. He was great in Game 1 with 30 points and 23 rebounds, but he continued his bad postseason trend of up-and-down games. This was a down game with just 11 points and 7 rebounds in nearly 33 minutes of action.
It was thought Davis might buck his trend when news came just before tip-off that Kevon Looney, the only rebounder who could outdo Davis in this matchup, was ill and may only be limited to 20 minutes. Looney ended up playing 11:44 and still collected 8 rebounds in that time.
But it was the surprise start of JaMychal Green that helped the Warriors as he scored 15 points and was 3-of-6 from 3-point territory. He does not rebound like Looney, but he opened up the spacing more and may have allowed Golden State to get better looks at all the 3-point shots.
The Lakers have little hope if Green is outscoring Davis. The game also wasted a huge first half from LeBron James, who scored 21 points but only added 2 more in the second half as the game quickly got away from LA. James even found his 3-point shot with a trio of early makes.
Los Angeles actually led 33-26 after a quarter, but the Warriors scored 41 and 43 points in the next two quarters to make the fourth quarter a yawner. Even after the Lakers cut it to 68-60 early in the third, Golden State quickly grew the lead to 30 points as Thompson seemingly could not miss.
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