The Los Angeles Lakers were unable to overcome their first half offensive struggles in Thursday night’s loss to the Golden State Warriors. While LeBron James and Austin Reaves finished the game with 33 and 31 points, respectively, most of that came in the second half as the Lakers could get nothing going early.
As a team, the Lakers shot just 35.7% from the field in the first half, totaling just 47 points and trailing by 13 at the break. With the postseason just around the corner, the Lakers still find themselves figuring out their offensive flow and rhythm and while Reaves understands that’s part of the process thanks to their midseason moves, it is still frustrating.
“I mean, you’re not ever gonna play a perfect game. You wish you could, but… it’s frustrating,” Reaves said after the loss. “That’s part of the process of becoming a really good team. You gotta go through those ups and downs, battles of going through situations where you have to figure it out. If everything was always smooth sailing, if at any point you in the future it doesn’t get there, if it’s a little rocky then you kind of don’t know what to turn to once you go through things like this. You have to adapt and adjust, and that’s what we’ll do so we’ll be better in the future.”
As Reaves said, the important thing for the Lakers is to learn and adjust during the rough stretches. One thing that the Warriors did defensively was to switch everything and Reaves knows the Lakers still have to figure out what works best in these situations.
“Just trying to figure out everything that works for us,” Reaves added. “We see flashes of things that we do that are good and then we kind of experiment with other stuff and it doesn’t look so good. We just gotta figure out what we can do as a unit to combat their 1-5 Reds.”
It is a very real possibility that the Lakers could see the Warriors in the playoffs, perhaps even in the first round. If that were to be the case, Reaves and the rest of the Lakers will no doubt be studying this contest and make the proper adjustments to come out on top.
JJ Redick says Lakers want home-court advantage in playoffs
The loss to the Warriors was also huge in the West standings as the Lakers dropped back to fourth in the conference, just one game ahead of Golden State. And head coach JJ Redick made it clear that his team wants home-court for at least the first round of the playoffs.
“Yeah, we would like to be in the top four,” Redick said before Thursday’s game against the Warriors. “We would like to have home-court. I think beyond just playing well at home, it would be nice for our guys to finish in Portland and then be able to be home for nine or 10 days.”
Redick noted that with all of the road trips the Lakers have had recently, it would be great for his team to be able to stay home for a while to start the postseason.
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