For more than a decade, every meeting between LeBron James and Stephen Curry — two of the greatest and most transformative players ever, arguably the two most towering figures of the last generation of NBA basketball, rivals turned Team USA running buddies, a couple of kids from Akron — has been appointment viewing.
At this stage in their respective transcendent careers, though, with James in Year 22 and an astounding 40 years old and Curry, a baby-faced assassin no longer, having just turned 37 and finishing up his 16th season, each one feels particularly special: something you’ve got to savor while you’ve still got the chance.
When the stars align to deliver both James’ Lakers and Curry’s Warriors in the heat of a playoff chase, with postseason seeding on the line, and with both teams in ascending form after making mammoth marquee acquisitions at the trade deadline — in case you hadn’t heard, Luka Dončić is a Laker and Jimmy Butler is a Warrior — and squaring off in a nationally televised Thursday night banger on the eve of the playoffs? Well, friend, that’s about as good as it gets.
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Before LeBron and Steph (and Luka, and Jimmy, and Draymond, and Steve, and JJ, and …) renew pleasantries in Los Angeles, let’s run through a handful of things worth knowing ahead of Lakers-Warriors, one of the most anticipated matchups of the latter days of the 2024-25 NBA season:
Playoff preview?
L.A. enters Thursday at 46-29, in third place in the Western Conference, mere thousandths of a percentage point ahead of the 47-30 Nuggets. Golden State sits two games back at 44-31, fifth in the West, a half-game up on the resilient Timberwolves, rising Clippers and slumping Grizzlies. They’ve been two of the best crunch-time crews in the league since their respective big trades, too, with Golden State going 8-2 in “clutch” contests (games in which the score was within five points in the final five minutes of the fourth quarter or overtime) and the Lakers going 9-5.
If the playoffs started today, the Lakers would host the Wolves in Round 1, while the Warriors would travel to Denver. Given how tightly packed the middle of the West is, though, it’s still eminently possible that these two teams could wind up opening the postseason against one another; multiple postseason projection models have Golden State with virtually even odds of landing in fifth or sixth, and while the Lakers are more likely to stay in third after Denver’s two losses this week, it’s far from sewn up.
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One imagines the powers that be at the league office would prefer getting to delay a series featuring this much megawatt talent until later in the postseason, when even more eyeballs might wind up fixated on it. (I’m reminded of the old David Stern joke that the NBA’s preferred Finals matchup would be Lakers vs. Lakers. LeBron-Luka vs. Steph-Jimmy-Draymond would probably strike the late commissioner a pretty decent substitute.) One would also suspect, though, that Adam Silver and Co. would be plenty happy to welcome — and promote the hell out of — such a matchup even if it started in mid-April rather than late May.
Jimmy eat world
Since Butler’s debut on Feb. 10, the Warriors have been one of the best teams in the NBA. They’re 19-5 since his arrival — the NBA’s third-best record in that span, behind only the historic Thunder and defending champion Celtics — with the league’s No. 5 offense and No. 3 defense, according to Cleaning the Glass. (Toss out one game he missed against the 76ers, and they’re 19-4 with Jimmy in the lineup; filter for just the games in which he, Curry and Draymond Green have all played, and Golden State’s 18-2.)
True to his word, Butler has proven a hand-in-glove fit in Golden State, averaging 17.5 points, 6.1 rebounds, 6.2 assists and 1.4 steals in 32.3 minutes per game. For the full season, only four players in the league are topping those numbers; Jimmy will see two of them on Thursday.
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Butler has helped elevate the Warriors on both ends. They’re blitzing opponents by 10.1 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions with him on the court, and — crucially — by an even-more-eye-popping 13.1 points-per-100 when Jimmy’s on the floor without Steph. Those non-Curry minutes have been the bane of Steve Kerr’s existence ever since Kevin Durant left town; Butler’s arrival has allowed Golden State to turn them into a strength, while giving Kerr a whole new suite of options for maximizing the Warriors’ offensive attack and a second all-world defensive genius to pair with Green along the back line of what’s become one of the league’s most difficult units to score on.
Whatever reasonable concerns may still exist about what the future in the Bay might hold for the famously combustible Butler, Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. imported Jimmy to see if he couldn’t turn what had become a moribund and under-.500 Warriors squad into something a hell of a lot more fearsome. So far, so good.
Luka with the lid off
Dončić joined the Lakers not only utterly stunned by the shock of being dealt by the only franchise he’d ever known, but also working his way back from a left calf strain that would wind up costing him nearly seven weeks. When he returned to the lineup just before the All-Star break, he needed a couple of games to find his legs and get acclimated to his new surroundings.
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Ever since those wobbly opening days in forum blue and gold, though? He’s looked every bit like the world-devouring megastar of Laker fans’ dreams:
The Lakers are 14-8 (a 52-win pace) with Dončić in uniform, and 11-6 (a 53-win clip) when he suits up alongside James. But while L.A.’s overall efficiency numbers have underwhelmed since Luka’s debut — 19th in offense, 13th in defense, 15th in net rating — he himself has not.
Since those first three knock-the-rust-off outings, Dončić is averaging 29.2 points, 8.7 rebounds, 8.3 assists and 1.9 steals in 36.5 minutes per game, shooting 38% from 3-point land on more than 10 attempts a night and 80.5% from the free throw line on nearly 10 attempts a night. The only players ever to produce like that over the course of a full season? Michael Jordan, James Harden, Russell Westbrook and Nikola Jokić. Decent company.
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When the league-shaking blockbuster first went down, plenty of pundits — present company included — wondered whether a Lakers defense built around Luka, LeBron and Austin Reaves without Anthony Davis lurking to clean everything up would be able to get stops at a championship-caliber level. All told, with Dončić on the floor, the Lakers have outscored opponents by 7.2 points-per-100, scoring and defending at rates that would rank top-six in the league over the course of the full season. Sounds pretty championship-caliber to me.
Whether that will hold up against elite offensive opposition in the heat of a playoff race, of course, is something that remains to be seen. You know what sounds like a pretty fun test? The supercharged Warriors, led by a dude who’s really enjoying the benefits of playing alongside a second All-Star-caliber creator:
Steph, unleashed
I mean, just look at this:
Curry hits L.A. fresh off one of the most impressive games of his career — and considering the career he’s had, that is saying something — with 52 points, 12 3-pointers, 10 rebounds, eight assists, five steals and just two turnovers in 37 minutes of work in a massive road win in Memphis. It was his second 50-point game of the season, both of which have come since the Butler trade — a period during which Steph has made it abundantly clear that, in addition to being the greatest shooter of all time, he’s also very much still one of the most devastating and important offensive players in the present tense. (For the season, Curry ranks third in offensive estimated plus-minus, behind only the MVP dyad of Jokić and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.)
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Since Jimmy’s arrival, Curry is averaging 27.8 points, 5.9 assists, 4.2 rebounds and 1.3 steals in 32.5 minutes per contest, shooting 57.8% on 2-pointers, 41.8% on 3s (on nearly 12 a game) and 91.3% from the foul line — good for an absurd .663 true shooting percentage. The only other players ever to score this much, this efficiently, on this high a usage rate? Jokić, Durant … and Steph himself, back in his unanimous-MVP-winning 2015-16 campaign.
That Curry can still crank it up to that level this far into his career is mind-blowing. That the Warriors are scoring nearly 122 points-per-100 in his minutes during this post-Jimmy-trade heater — a rate that would top the East-leading Cavaliers’ league-best and historically dominant offense for the full season — is the kind of thing that will keep opposing coaches up at night heading into the season’s home stretch.
Speaking of “cranking it up to that level this far into his career” …
LeBron, everywhere
It turns out that having the option to toss the keys to one of the greatest offensive engines in the world, and not having the weight of every possession on his shoulders, agrees with LeBron, too.
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In his 18 appearances since Luka’s debut — he missed seven games with a groin strain — James has averaged 24.3 points, 9.0 rebounds, 6.7 assists and 2.1 steals-plus-blocks in 36.1 minutes per game while shooting 49.7% from the floor. It’s not as if he’s suddenly just parked in the corner or anything; James’ usage rate with Luka on the floor is still 27.5%, according to PBP Stats.
It’s worth noting, though, that LeBron has never had a usage rate that low for a full season, and that even a slight reduction in the amount of time and energy he has to expend on the ball allows him to double down in other areas. Like hitting the glass — his 22.4% defensive rebounding rate since Luka’s debut would be the second-highest mark of his career — and reminding would-be drivers that they should really not try that stuff when he’s in the ZIP code:
An increased level of activity and aggressiveness from LeBron, especially on the defensive end, is a critical aspect of one of the revamped Lakers’ most intriguing new looks: the 6-foot-9 James lining up alongside the 6-6 Dončić, 6-7 Dorian Finney-Smith, 6-8 Rui Hachimura and 6-5 Reaves (who’s been balling lately) in a “small”-ball lineup that has plenty of physicality, length and switchability at the point of attack. The Lakers can’t replace what AD gave them as a back-line eraser, but being huge and malleable across all five positions can help stop leaks before they spring:
That lineup has only played 69 minutes together this season, but it’s +19 in them, was excellent in Monday’s win over a super-tough Rockets squad, and has allowed a minuscule 103.5 points-per-100 in that similarly minuscule sample. It’d be really fun to see how L.A.’s nascent version of small-ball might hold up against an opponent that likes to run its own … like, say, Golden State’s brand, with rising Defensive Player of the Year candidate Draymond Green flanked by Butler, Moses Moody, Brandin Podziemski and Curry, which has allowed a microscopic 102.4 points-per-100 across 133 minutes.
Styles make fights, and teams with a hell of a lot of style and fight make for awfully compelling matchups. Lakers-Warriors promises to be one Thursday … and, just maybe, a couple of weeks from now, too.
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