Without LeBron James in the lineup, the red-hot Utah Jazz were too much for the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday night, coming away with a 132-125 victory.
To their credit, the Lakers played hard and stayed in the game all night, but in the end it was the Jazz that came out on top.
Free throws played a big role in that as the Lakers put the Jazz on the line 39 times on the night compared to 24 for L.A. Utah had a 31-8 free throw advantage in the second half when they pulled away for the victory.
After the game, Lakers head coach Darvin Ham took exception with the number of whistles although he urged his team to play through it and control what they can control, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Obviously I’ll have to go back and look at the tape to be 100% sure, but from my vantage point, I just see guys going to the basket, our guys are not disrupting their path, we’re showing our hands and even if it’s one hand up, the other hand is tucked and now guys can just throw themselves into you and throw the ball up to the rim and it’s a foul. It is what it is. I feel like we had some ticky tack ones. I was looking back at our replay guys who usually give me the signal when they want to challenge and they were all telling me not to challenge a bunch of those calls so apparently we must have been fouling. But from my vantage point, I just think it’s a slippery slope because the same thing then happens on the other end and then there’s no call. We say mental toughness, you have to have mental toughness. You got to be able to play through adversity. And a lot of times when that whistle gets active like that, it creates a lot of adversity. But that said, I thought we played two-thirds of a good, really good basketball game, three-fourths, whatever you want to say. And then the fouls just got away from us. We only had 12 turnovers, which is really good compared to the way we’ve been turning the ball over. But again, they were able to capitalize off a ton of them. [They had] 23 points off our 12 turnovers. But them going 36-for-39 from the free throw line and taking 39 free throws, it’s like, we had 24, that’s a lot of free throws between both teams combined. It totally disrupts the flow of the game.”
Getting to the free throw line is usually a strength for the Lakers, so the Jazz gave them a little taste of their own medicine.
With the loss, the Lakers dropped to 19-21 on the season, continuing to fall short of expectations. Ham has played a big role in that so far this season, but now it will be up to him to guide the Lakers out of this rough patch to get back into postseason contention.
Lakers informed Darvin Ham job is not in jeopardy
Despite the Lakers’ struggles and all of the whispers about Ham’s job security, reports indicate that the organization let him know that his job is not in jeopardy so he can focus on figuring out how to turn things around.
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