IN THE DAYS leading up to the Los Angeles Lakers' second-round series against the Golden State Warriors, Klay Thompson was on the court, wearing a blue pinnie with an ironed-on No. 11, and practicing against them.
Not the Klay Thompson, you see, but a facsimile. A Laker in Warriors clothes. The Lakers assigned the fill-in practice role to a man named Dru Anthrop, the team's head video coordinator and player development coach, in an effort to prepare the team's rotation players for the Warriors.
Anthrop (6-foot, 180 pounds) doesn't have the frame of the 6-6, 220-pound Thompson, but he has the familiarity with his game from one too many bleary-eyed nights breaking down Warriors film to ping out to players' iPads to study the next morning.