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James: I used to play against the Warriors and knew in advance that they would climax their scoring in the third quarter

3:52pm, 5 June 2025Basketball

Today, Lakers forward James' podcast program "The Brain of the Field" aired in the tenth episode of the second season, with James and host Nash talking about many topics.

Speaking of the Pacers' ultimate reversal ability in each round of the series, James said: "In the 2010s when I played for the Heat and the Cavaliers, we always talked about that, and the Warriors were one of these teams. There was always this saying, if you could face them and win the third quarter, because these guys were amazing because at first you talked about it, and then it happened. Then the coach went into the locker room and mentioned it again, and you would say, 'Shut up, stop talking about this! We know.' He said, 'Guys, listen, go out and warm up. Because the Warriors in the third quarter will try to pinch you right away.'

"There were a lot of these games at their heyday, and they still do it every now and then. But when Stephen (Curry) and Klay (Thompson), they will try to hit you a 9-0 wave at the beginning of the third quarter, forcing you to call a timeout and try to get back the momentum. I've experienced this scoring climax before, you can't stop it, you know in advance that it's going to happen. It's like an avalanche, and you try to fight it. Your only way to fight is to score yourself, attack the basket, get fouls, stand on the free throw line, and slow down their game a bit. At the same time, you have to stay calm, like you said, you can't let the bandwidth be stretched too much, you need to keep it to that state, ‘OK, we've been through this before, we understand it, we know they'll have a small climax. How do we get our bandwidth to be stretched to a compromise? ’”

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