Following what some would consider their worst showing of the season against the Chicago Bulls, many hoped the Los Angeles Lakers would bounce back on Monday night against the Orlando Magic. But unfortunately, despite finally having their entire rotation healthy, the Lakers once again gave a disappointing effort and suffered a second straight loss.
The game against the Magic followed a similar script to the previous one with an awful third quarter ultimately dooming the Lakers. And afterwards, Dorian Finney-Smith felt that the Lakers let their offensive struggles affect their defense, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“We gotta put a 48-minute game together. That third quarter was tough. We let our offense mess with our defensive energy and it was just tough to fight back.”
Following an eight-game win streak, the Lakers have now lost seven of their last 10 games while dealing with injuries to numerous players on the roster. But Finney-Smith believes this late-season adversity is a good thing for the Lakers as a whole to push through and grow as a team:
“For sure. We needed the adversity, especially being a new team. We get to learn a lot about each other during tough times. You usually don’t see things when you’re winning so we got the chance to grow and we’re gonna use this opportunity to grow.”
And despite the struggles, Finney-Smith still has full belief in this Lakers team to turn things around and return to their previous level of play:
“For sure. We told on ourselves, we showed we can do it. So it’s up to us. We gotta hold each other accountable and do it. We’re asking to help each other fill in gaps and that requires a lot of effort and energy and we gotta put a 48-minute game together.”
The Lakers have three games remaining on this road trip and 11 games left in the season to figure this out and if they can’t, their playoff run will be a short one.
Dorian Finney-Smith feels Lakers are close to unlocking offense around Luka Doncic
The Lakers have struggled on both ends of the court during this recent skid, but it wasn’t too long ago that things were clicking and Dorian Finney-Smith believes the team is close to unlocking things on the offensive side around Luka Doncic.
“It’s just fun, man,” Finney-Smith said. “He’s gonna create so many problems for people on the offensive end, so we just gotta make it easy for him. We gotta make open shots, Jaxson keep doing his thing and catching lobs. Everybody just do what they’re paid to do and do their job.”
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