As Pelicans focus on stopping Curry, Thompson stands ready

Anthony Davis wouldn't divulge New Orleans' exact defensive strategy, but he made it pretty clear that the goal is to stop the Warriors' Stephen Curry."We're going to try to get the ball out of his hands and make somebody else beat us," Davis said at Oracle Arena on Friday, a day before the teams' best-of-seven, first-round series starts.Somewhere, Klay Thompson is smiling.More than ever this season, when Curry is blitzed, double-teamed or shadowed, he's gotten rid of the ball quickly and let his teammates pick apart the opponent's defense with 4-on-3 advantages.[...] when the Warriors play 4-on-3, the ball finds Thompson, who is more than happy to take the open shots."I think we've been making teams pay all year for trying to do that," Thompson said.Curry scored 15 or fewer points in 11 games this season, and the Warriors went 10-1 in them — often with Thompson carrying the load.In those 11 games, Thompson averaged 25.1 points while improving his field-goal percentage from his 46.3 percent season average to 54.1 percent and his three-point percentage from 43.9 percent to 50.5 percent.If the eighth-seeded Pelicans' plan is to get the ball out of Curry's hands, it couldn't...