LeBron James is about as familiar with facing Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors in the playoffs as possible. As a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers, he faced the Warriors in four head-to-head NBA Finals matchups and is now involved in a fifth playoff series against them.
James finished with just a 7-15 record against Curry’s Warriors in the NBA Finals but managed to take Game 1 using a 117-112 win. The victory nearly didn’t happen, given Golden State used a 14-0 run late in the fourth quarter to tie it up at 112-112.
When facing the Warriors, James made clear that the whole unit needs to maintain composure — stating that Golden State will “drive you crazy” with how quickly they can pull off an explosive run with Curry’s dynamic shot-making from deep.
“You got to hold your composure with this team,” James said about facing the Warriors. “They drive you crazy, and it’s the team that can hold their composure after a run like that, or they make a few threes or Steph [Curry] coming with a barrage of threes… you’ve got to still be able to maintain focus. We’ve got to be a lot better.”
The Lakers came out of the gate in the series with a concerted effort to make things difficult on Curry and other shooters like Klay Thompson and Jordan Poole. Despite Golden State shooting a staggering 21-53 (39.6 percent) from beyond the arc compared to Los Angeles’ 6-25 (24.0 percent), it wasn’t enough to get the victory.
Part of defeating the Warriors comes through mixing up strategies of your own. James has taken it upon himself to play a different style than the Warriors are accustomed to seeing, primarily by spending more time off-ball to prevent the defense from being able to load up and pre-rotate help.
“LeBron (James) is playing a totally different style, a totally different game than we’ve ever seen him play before. And it is interesting figuring it out. It’s very interesting you are not used to seeing LeBron off the ball so much, and so I thought that was interesting and something that we’ll have to adjust to. It’s just not your typical LeBron running the show, which is a bit weird.”
While it remains to be seen how the Lakers will manage to fare against the Warriors throughout the remainder of this best-of-seven series, it’s clear that James is not taking any moment for granted as he battles it out against Curry’s team once again.
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