To say Anthony Davis was a problem in the Warriors’ Game 1 loss to the Lakers would be an understatement.
The Los Angeles center scored 30 points, had 23 rebounds, five assists and four blocks. He was a monster on defense, with Golden State shooting 4-for-17 on shots he contested.
Overall, the Lakers dominated the points in the paint, doubling up the Warriors at 54-28. That’s to be somewhat expected, as Golden State is not a team built to score down low.
That said, they must take a different approach if they don’t want to go down 0-2 on Thursday. Former Warrior Tom Tolbert explained how they can do that on KNBR Thursday. Put simply, they need to take it to the big man.
Via Tolbert:
Go with some ferocity. Go to dunk it or just go in there with a little bit of anger and force the official to make a call. At least a few times. Cause if that doesn’t work, I don’t know what the hell you’re going to do. You’ve got to try it.
You can’t just acquiesce, and say ‘Okay, he’s really big, really good shot blocker, let’s not even try.’ Cause then they’ve won at that point. They’ve won that part of the game. They’ve sealed that off, and you’re not even going to try to score at the rim. You have to at least try at the rim to get in there. If you’re going to go, you better go strong, and you better go with some force.
You have to give it a shot occasionally. Not a steady diet of it, that’s not going to be a strength of yours going into this game. That’s not who they are anyway. It is who the Lakers are, so you don’t just want to butt your head over and over again and get stubborn. Oh screw it we’re going to go again, we’re going to go again. Then you look up and you’re another 4-for-17.
Either all the way, or 10 footers, nine footers. You don’t want to shoot 20-foot jump shots, because then you’d much rather take a 3. I’m not saying you can’t take it, these guys are more than capable of making those shots, but you’d like to close the distance a little bit more.
Listen to the full interview above. You can listen to every KNBR interview on our podcast page at knbr.com/podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Catch Tolbert & Copes weekdays from 2 – 6 p.m. on KNBR 104.5 / 680 and streaming live on KNBR.com.
