Lakers vs Warriors Preview
The Lakers and Warriors will face off in the matchups season finale Thursday night on TNT. The Lakers have won all three of the previous matchups, but this is the first time since the Luka Doncic and Jimmy Butler trades that the teams have faced off.
Tonight’s game has all sorts of playoff seeding implications, and the Lakers will have to execute at a high level on both ends if they want to complete the season series sweep.
“JJ Redick wants this team to adopt a playoff mentality.”@mcten describes the Lakers’ approach heading into the final stretch of the regular season 🙌 pic.twitter.com/6XWpzoRJ7e
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) April 3, 2025
Jockeying For Position
The Lakers come into tonight as the three seed in the Western Conference, thanks to the Nuggets dropping two games in as many nights. A win tonight would give the Lakers a half-game lead over Denver with a game in hand.
A loss would drop the Lakers back down to the four seed, where they would be a half-game back of Denver and would be only a game up on the Warriors, who are currently the five seed. The Lakers own the tiebreaker over Golden State, thanks to having already won three games against them.
Looking beyond tonight, the Lakers are a full three games back of the two-seed Rockets, yet are only 2.5 games ahead of the eight-seed Grizzlies. The conference is extremely tight, and every game will matter in the month of April.
Containing Stephen Curry
It feels like for the past decade, goal #1 when facing the Warriors has been to try to limit Stephen Curry. Well, that means even more tonight considering Curry is coming off of a 52-point game where he hit 12 threes, grabbed 10 rebounds, and dished out eight assists.
It will, as usual, fall on the likes of the birthday boy Jarred Vanderbilt to contain Curry while also getting help from guys like Gabe Vincent and Dorian Finney-Smith.
JJ Redick has done an excellent job game-planning against the league’s biggest stars this season, and he will need to cook something up again tonight against the Chef.
Finding Efficient Offense
The Lakers are coming off a gritty game against the Rockets, where LA shot just 39% from the field and 34% from 3. They will need to be much better tonight against the Warriors, whose defense has vastly improved since the Jimmy Butler trade.
The duo of LeBron James and Luka Doncic will, of course, have to show up, but big games from Austin Reaves, who always seems to perform in the big moments against Golden State, and Rui Hachimura are key, especially if the Warriors are able to start an avalanche from deep.
