Coming into the season, there were questions about whether the Los Angeles Lakers could defend at a high enough level to contend. And despite their strong start to the season, those questions have remained as the Lakers have had good games, but also some really rough ones as well.
Their Emirates NBA Cup quarterfinal contest against the San Antonio Spurs, unfortunately, fell into the latter category as the Lakers were exposed by a young, athletic team that was without their best player. And in speaking after the game Luka Doncic didn’t feel the Spurs did anything fancy and feels the Lakers just have to do a better job individually of guarding.
“They [San Antonio] were just going downhill [to] drive and kick. They scored,” Luka said after the 14-point loss. “I think they had like 10 3-pointers in the first half. They got up pretty quickly. Just each one of us [have] gotta guard better and not let your guard drive that way.”
Doncic led the Lakers with 35 points and eight assists, but the offensive side isn’t where they need to fix things. Defense is the concern and the Lakers did get a boost with the return of Marcus Smart who had an excellent game for the Lakers and Luka feels the team needs to be more like him on that side of the court.
“Yeah, for sure. Obviously, [Marcus] Smart… obviously, he had a great offensive game too,” Doncic noted. “But he brought the energy on the bench. When he guards, when he talks to us, we listen to him. [We] just gotta be a little more [and] see what he’s doing. Trying to be better on [the] defensive end. We gotta figure out being better on defensive end for sure.”
Doncic and the Lakers understand where they need to get better, now it will simply be a matter of doing it. And even though it is still the first half of the season, Luka believes this team needs to figure it out sooner rather than later.
“Obviously it can happen quicker, but we know in the NBA it’s 82 games,” Doncic said. “So, I would say we got time, but we need to figure it out pretty quickly. Our record is pretty good, 17-7, that’s pretty good to start. But I feel like we can be so much better than this.”
The Lakers can certainly be better defensively and will need to be if they have any hopes of competing with the top teams in the league as the Spurs and others have shown that this defense can be exploited in a big way.
Lakers potential trade target reportedly not available
There is plenty of time for the Lakers to make some roster improvements that could help their defense. However, one potential target is reportedly not available right now and that’s Herb Jones of the New Orleans Pelicans.
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