Friday night’s Emirates NBA Cup match between the Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder came down to the wire. The Lakers trailed by two points with under 30 seconds to go, but ultimately lost by eight due to some late-game execution errors. For the third time in the last six games, rookie Dalton Knecht was the Lakers’ leading scorer.
But the bigger issue wasn’t the fact that neither LeBron James nor Anthony Davis could muster more than 20 points. It was the turnover margin — and by extension, the points off of turnovers margin — that did the Lakers in. L.A. finished with 17 turnovers compared to the Thunder’s 10. L.A. scored five points off of OKC’s 10 turnovers, while the Thunder scored 20 off of L.A.’s 17.
That 15-point margin made all the difference in a close game throughout for the Lakers. And Knecht knows it’s the biggest thing the Lakers have to figure out as they play these tightly contested games against some of the league’s best teams.
“That’s probably our biggest thing, not taking care of the ball,” Knecht said. “I think early, we turned the ball over a lot or just started off slow. That’s something we have to fix and clean up for sure. We didn’t do that against San Antonio, but we have to make sure that we don’t do that, especially at home.”
Beyond that, Knecht knows the Lakers have had a major emphasis on defense given the drastic gap between their offensive and defensive efficiencies thus far this season.
“We’re trying to lock in on the defensive end and make sure that we stop our opponents. But like I said, we know we can all score. We know when we put five guys on the court, all five of them can go score. Isos or whatever. So, that’s our biggest thing is just making sure that we focus on the defensive end.”
It’s clear the Lakers are far from a perfect team and still have some major gaps that need to be fixed. Rebounding, turnovers and defense have led to this short 1-4 skid for L.A. Luckily, they have built up enough wins to allow them to work through these issues without completely losing their place in the conference standings.
LeBron James discusses rebounding and turnover struggles
It’s little things that often spell the difference between wins and losses for the elite teams in the league, and LeBron James knows that things like turnovers and rebounding must be improved upon quickly.
“Well, I mean, when you’re shading and helping a lot, especially against Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] and J Dub, they have a numbers game on offensive rebounding, but we got to do a better job of trying to clean glass and do a much better job of not turning the ball over as much,” James said.
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