The Los Angeles Lakers‘ recent good form came to a crashing end against the lottery-bound Philadelphia 76ers with a 104-118 loss in the Wells Fargo Center. The Lakers couldn’t earn a win against the 76ers without Joel Embiid and Paul George while losing Anthony Davis to injury during the contest.
Tyrese Maxey showed the world why he deserves to be an All-Star with 43 points (15-26 FG) in this win. Kelly Oubre had a solid 20-point (8-18 FG) game with eight rebounds and five assists. Ricky Council IV came off the bench for 16 points (6-10) and seven rebounds while center Guerschon Yabusele had 14 points (6-9 FG), five rebounds, and four steals in the win.
The Lakers were led by LeBron James‘ 31 points (10-16 FG), eight rebounds, and nine assists. He was the only high-producing Laker outside Dalton Knecht, who scored 24 points (8-13 FG) with five rebounds. Austin Reaves had 13 points (6-10 FG), six rebounds, and eight assists while star center Anthony Davis was ruled out after playing under 10 minutes and scoring four points (2-3 FG).
Let’s take a deeper look at this game and analyze the major takeaways.
Lack Of Anthony Davis Sunk The Lakers
The Lakers saw Anthony Davis limp off the court in the first quarter after picking up an injury in just 10 minutes of action. Given how important Davis is for the Lakers, this was a loss that made it infinitely harder for the Lakers to find a way to win this game. The 76ers took advantage of a defensive presence like Davis not being on the court, with the Lakers being forced to rely on inconsistent bigs like Jaxson Hayes.
This Lakers team has been overly dependent on Davis for the last few seasons, with no supplemental big men on the roster or anyone else who is as proficient defensively. They had to resort to playing Dorian Finney-Smith as a small-ball center tonight because of the lack of competent seven-footers on the Lakers and the team’s unwillingness to address this hole either.
This should be an unacceptable result even without Davis because the 76ers were without Paul George and Joel Embiid, but Davis checking out of the game essentially ensured a bad night for the Lakers. They’ve put themselves in a corner by not having any other capable centers on the roster, something that even Anthony Davis wants them to fix.
Sloppy Basketball
The Lakers lost because they played ugly basketball. We have seen the team be extremely sloppy offensively in losses earlier this season but it seemed to improve greatly over the last seven games where the Lakers became a far more competitive franchise in the West. However, tonight was a regression back to their sloppy way, leading to 22 turnovers from the Lakers. The 76ers had nine turnovers on the night in comparison.
This sort of weak play along with no real center on the roster led to the Lakers being outplayed statistically across the board. They lost the rebounding battle (39-43), forced only five steals compared to Philly’s 14 against them, and the shooting numbers weren’t even close.
The Lakers were 37-72 (51.4 FG%) from the field while the 76ers were 43-91 (47.3 FG%) from the field, attempting 19 more shots by creating extra opportunities through their defense.
It’s impossible to win a high-stakes NBA game with such sloppy play, something Lakers head coach JJ Redick has pointed out in the past. Nonetheless, his team regressed into playing as a bad version we saw earlier this season not the squad that’s been pushing teams to the limit over the last 10 days.
No 3-Point Creativity
If the Lakers’ lack of a big man got exposed without Anthony Davis, we also have to talk about how exposed the shooting skill on the roster was tonight. There was almost no hope for the Lakers when it came to outside shooting, with every player building a brick house except one.
The Lakers went 10-33 (30.3 3P%) as a squad from beyond the arc tonight. If we take away sniper Dalton Knecht’s five makes on eight attempts from this, the Lakers were shooting a pitiful 5-25 (25.0 3P%) which will never be enough to seal an NBA win. Philly shot just marginally better from outside (11-34, 32.4 3P%) but it led to enough of a difference to deliver this win to them.
Davis not being on the court to draw extra defenders to him and creating more space on the three-point line impacted their shooting, but the team’s creativity was lacking. Outside LeBron, there was very little coherence to the team’s offense with forced shots and poor ball movement.
The Lakers also need a more reliable offensive guard outside Austin Reaves being the only option in that regard. This game was a pretty ringing endorsement of why the franchise needs to add players before the deadline.
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