The Los Angeles Lakers picked up their first loss of the season on Monday night as they fell to the Phoenix Suns 109-105. Despite that, Anthony Davis continued his outstanding start to the season finishing with 29 points, 15 rebounds, three assists and three blocks.
Things don’t get any easier for the Lakers as they head to Cleveland to face the Cavaliers on the second game of this road trip. The Cavaliers have been one of the most impressive teams in the league so far this season, but Davis and the Lakers have set some goals this year and plan on keeping them.
Following the loss to the Suns, Davis spoke about the Lakers bouncing back against the Cavaliers, revealing that the team has a goal of not losing two games in a row this season, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Nobody in the history has went 82-0. We don’t expect to lose but we’re realists and realistically we were probably gonna lose a game. Obviously we didn’t want to start off with the first loss on this trip, but I’m happy and I like the way guys competed, we played extremely hard. We’ll bounce back against a Cleveland team that’s 4-0, another team that’s playing extremely well. So we got to go win. We’re trying to not lose two in a row. That’s gonna be a challenge for us all year, not to lose two in a row.”
That is a big challenge to set, but one that shows the resilience and toughness of a team. Things can spiral quickly and last season the Lakers had multiple losing streaks of four games so this team is very much aware of how things can go wrong. As for what cost them against the Suns, Davis pointed to that second quarter:
“We scored 14 points. We had a good defensive quarter, gave up 25. They had 50 for the half, we just couldn’t score the basketball in that second quarter, which kind of hurt us. A lot of it was turnovers, some tough shots on our end. Shooting some tough shots. We can’t have a 14-point quarter. As good as we are offensively, as a team and individually, to have 14 points is a tough quarter. We were able to recover from it and then KD made some very tough shots… But I think our execution down the stretch was really good.”
Davis’ words echoed those of both head coach JJ Redick and LeBron James as the Lakers all seem to be happy with the overall effort and competitiveness. If they can tighten up a couple of things, and Davis continues to play at an MVP-level, the Lakers will be just fine moving forward.
Lakers’ Anthony Davis named Western Conference Player of the Week
Anthony Davis’ outstanding effort against the Suns was just a continuation of his start to the season and the Lakers superstar has already picked up some accolades for it, being named Western Conference Player of the Week.
Davis averaged 34 points, 11 rebounds, 3.3 assists, 1.7 steals and 2.3 blocks while shooting 57.1% from the field in leading the Lakers to a 3-0 week to open the season. Davis joined Elgin Baylor, Kobe Bryant and Jerry West as the only Lakers to start the season with three consecutive 30-point games.
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