It’s a little too early to watch the standings, but through 13 games, the Los Angeles Lakers are 7-6 and are the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference. They dropped to 7-6 after an embarrassing blowout loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, where they were outscored 40-12 in the third quarter.
Anthony Davis — who has been trying to take on a greater leadership role recently — called out the whole team for a lack of effort and execution in the second half. Davis was solid in the Lakers’ loss, putting up 22 points, eight rebounds, two assists, three blocks and three steals. However, he took just 13 shots, much too low of a total for a player of his caliber.
But he held nothing back when discussing how the Lakers look through their first 13 games. “We only see Sunday. We got to decide who we want to be. A championship team? That’s not us right now. We’re not winning a championship the way we’re playing. We got to be better,” Davis said. “We got to care more for our wins at home and our wins in general. That was embarrassing.
“To be up five at half. This team shoots a lot of threes. They have guys that can score the basketball. There was no effort in the third quarter. I don’t want to say the first half. The first half we looked really good. We had some mistakes, but our effort was there, our energy. In the third quarter, that wasn’t there for us.”
The bad news is, as Davis said, the Lakers are not executing the way they need to be right now, and it’s leading to some horrible losses. L.A. could be 10-3 right now if not for meltdowns against the Oklahoma City Thunder and Timberwolves.
On the other side, the Lakers still have a lot of time to figure out how they can get to title contention. They have the talent on the roster to do it, but they have to figure out a scheme that works for them.
The Lakers now have a back-to-back on Sunday and Monday against the San Antonio Spurs and Chicago Bulls. Picking up a couple of wins would be huge to get some momentum back on their side. They need it after an ugly showing on Friday night.
Frank Vogel sees loss to Timberwolves as motivator
Sometimes, all a team needs to kick things back into high gear is a really bad loss. Friday night certainly qualifies as that, and Frank Vogel is hoping that it can act as a motivator.
“Well, there’s no better motivator than a bad loss. I think all of our guys are angry, the coaching staff is angry. We’ll get back to work and do whatever we need to do to fix it and get our execution better and all those things. Effort, focus, execution.”
Have you subscribed to our YouTube channel? It’s the best way to watch player interviews, exclusive coverage from events, participate in live shows, and more!