IV in the 4th

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Warriors led 84-77 going into the fourth, and it felt like with Anthony Davis largely going quiet in the second half and Stephen Curry spamming pick-and-roll action to get looks, Golden State had a really good shot to even the series at 2-2.

And then Lonnie Walker IV scored almost as many points as the entire Warriors roster in the fourth quarter. Golden State had 17, Walker had 15 on 6/9 shooting. He’d played about 15 minutes in the first three quarters, and taken zero shots. He just simply … dominated. Lonnie Walker IV dominated the champs.

His path this season and postseason has been a trip. He didn’t play 15 minutes in the entire Memphis series, didn’t get into Game 1 of this series, and got in for garbage time of L.A.’s blowout Game 2 loss. Darvin Ham saw something he liked and played Walker in Games 3 and 4 in minutes that’d typically go to Jarred Vanderbilt or Rui Hachimura.

It paid off in Game 4.

Ham could do that because Walker is a credible defender and the Warriors’ offense is in hell right now.

Klay Thompson shot miserably on Monday night. He hit a big corner three off of a secondary break in the fourth, and then proceeded to take a Poolian bomb in a bad spot moments later. That was followed shortly thereafter by this shot, after which both Steve Kerr and Draymond Green appear to question the decision.

The Warriors’ margin for error in this series isn’t big enough to survive bricking very difficult shots, even when it is a legend taking the shot. Kerr was asked about Thompson’s decision-making in the post-game, and basically said that Klay has saved their tails enough in the past to earn the trust to take whatever shots he deems worthy. That’s what any good coach has to say in front of microphones. But behind closed doors, they have to tell him that taking those shots while getting cooked by a reserve who has a DNP-CD in this very series is going to lose the Warriors their title defense.

I called one of Klay’s shots “Poolian” — well, someone had to take them because Jordan Poole sure wasn’t going to get a chance. He played all of 10 minutes and 24 seconds. After starting Poole at times in the first round, Kerr turned to Gary Payton II to start over Kevon Looney (who is also barely playing in this series) in Game 4. Poole ended up with not just fewer minutes than GP2, but also Donte DiVincenzo (who at times looks unplayable in this series as he did at times against the Kings) and Moses Moody, who received lots of big minutes late. How Poole has been disappeared in this series is striking. I’m about the 300th NBA writer to say it, but that $128 million contract that kicks in next season looks like a real situation for the Warriors, especially with Green and Thompson expecting new contracts.

Speaking of Green: he’s doing as good a job as you can expect on defense, but he’s giving nothing on offense and has had the Warriors’ worst plus-minus in all three losses. Single-game plus-minus is noisy, but all series Golden State has been performing better with Green on the bench than on the floor. That’s something. The playmaking has largely been there — he’s at 27 assists and seven turnovers for the series — but he’s not looking at the rim at all, so the Lakers can load up attention on the others. That was a little evident on Curry’s final two shots to take the lead.

Dennis Schroder switches onto Green as Curry draws AD and the Warriors don’t even dream about playing to the interior mismatch. (Right decision.) When Green grabs the offensive rebound, he doesn’t even seem to consider putting the go-ahead shot up at the rim — he fires it back out to Curry, and the Lakers stay relatively balanced because no one is afraid of Green pounding a shot up inside on the carom. He’s just not a threat.

So if Thompson is missing shots that have Kerr throwing his hands up, and Poole can’t get on the floor, and Andrew Wiggins isn’t popping, and Green won’t look at the rim … it’s all up to Steph, isn’t it? And that’s what we saw unfold: the onus to score is on Steph Curry, and the Lakers all know it, and sometimes it doesn’t happen.

And now the Warriors are fully back on the ropes. The Lakers are far from invincible, and Curry should have at least one blockbuster performance in him this series. But he did have to give one of those a little more than a week ago in Game 7 vs. Sacramento just to get here. Does he have another on Wednesday? The Warriors are out of chances.