Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James (6) reacts to a foul against him during their game against the Golden State Warriors in the third quarter of Game 2 of the NBA basketball Western Conference semifinal playoff series at the Chase Center in San Francisco, Calif., on Thursday, May 4, 2023. (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)
The free-throw disparity in the first two games between the Warriors and the Lakers is going just as expected, with the Lakers having more than double the attempts at the charity stripe than the Warriors.
But you’d never know it, based on the feelings and comments after Thursday night.
It’s the Lakers who have been expressing their frustration with the officiating, despite the Warriors being called for 20 more fouls (47 to the Lakers’ 27) and Los Angeles shooting 46 free throws compared to Golden State’s 22.
Lakers guard D’Angelo Russell told the media, “I’m not trying to go viral tonight,” when asked about the officiating after the game, and Lakers coach Darwin Ham made it clear that he wasn’t happy, though he didn’t want to directly address it.
“I have zero thoughts,” Ham said. “I get paid to coach. I’m trying to coach my ass off for my team. Anything officials related, that’s on the league to look at. Try to be as fair and consistent as possible for both teams.”
LeBron James also was visibly frustrated, earning a technical foul late in the third quarter and seemingly seeking a second technical and an ejection in the fourth, when he complained about a foul call and lobbied Ham to (unsuccessfully) challenge the decision.
Perhaps the Lakers weren’t used to things being as even as they were in Game 2. Golden State was still whistled for more fouls (23) than Los Angeles (15), but the Warriors only shot one fewer free throw, 16 to LA’s 17.
That pales in comparison to Game 1, when the Warriors were called for twice as many fouls (24) as the Lakers (12) and Los Angeles shot 29 free throws to Golden State’s six.
In some ways, this was entirely predictable. Pretty much every regular season stat that portends to fouls called and free throws skewed heavily to the Lakers and against the Warriors:
Regular season ranking (out of 30 NBA teams)
- Fouls called on them: LAL fewest, GSW third-most
- Fouls called on opponents: LAL 2nd-most, GSW fewest
- FT attempts: LAL most, GSW fewest
- Opponent FT attempts: LAL fewest, GSW 6th-most
So perhaps the Lakers saw Game 2’s tight free-throw numbers and smaller margin of fouls and figured something must be off.
But could the bigger difference be attributed to how the Lakers played offensively?
In Game 1, the Lakers took 25 3-pointers out of their 92 shots and grabbed 13 offensive rebounds. So many shots inside and added second chances surely made it easier to get to the foul line so many times.
In Game 2? Their 3-point shots increased to 34 and the offensive rebounds dropped to nine. It’s harder to draw fouls on shots farther away from the basket and also grab offensive boards.
Perhaps the most important number is this: in Game 1, the Lakers took 16 shots inside the restricted area — a number that doesn’t include any missed shots where they were fouled, either. In Game 2? That number was cut in half, with only eight shots in the restricted area.
Those numbers also play right into how a smaller Warriors lineup wants to get out, run and attack the Lakers, who tend to have both James and Anthony Davis on the floor together.
We didn’t see that in Game 1, when Golden State fired a whopping 53 shots from 3-point range in Game 1. But the Warriors cut that down to 42 in Game 2, and while they made the same number of 3-pointers in each game (21), their 2-point makes increased from 22 in Game 1 to 27 in Game 2.
They doubled their made free throws, too, from five to 10.
Maybe the Lakers have something to complain about after all.
Originally published at Alex Simon