Anthony Davis went down early in the Los Angeles Lakers blowout loss to the Philadelphia 76ers on Tuesday night. He played only 10 minutes before suffering an abdominal injury that sidelined him for the remainder of the game, and head coach JJ Redick and company were unable to keep the team afloat afterwards.
The Lakers and 76ers were tied 25-25 after the first quarter, before Philadelphia proceeded to score 48 points in the second quarter to take a 16-point lead into halftime. Tyrese Maxey was absolutely dominant for them, finishing with 43 points on 15-for-26 from the field and was one of four 76ers players to have two or more steals.
Redick assessed what went wrong for the Lakers once Davis went down with his injury, and he chalked it up to a mix of things, some of which had to do with injury and some of which was about the players on the court, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“The second quarter… Look, three in four nights, back-to-back, I’m not sure where our sort of collective brains were at. I understand the physical fatigue, we were a step slow all night on Maxey, particularly in that quarter. We talked about having a compact shell, we were hugged up on our guys, not just on Maxey, on everyone. Talked about the guys that were heavy shift guys that we could be in a help position off of. It was just get to the basket, get to the basket, get to the basket. And then frankly, you’re not gonna win a game if someone takes 19 more shots than you and gets eight more offensive rebounds. We were throwing the ball everywhere. I think that’s just again, fatigue, mental and physical. Just bad decision-making and poor execution. Very unorganized throughout the game. Not our best.”
Despite all of this, Redick was not discouraged by the loss and still feels the team is in a great place moving forward:
“You have to look at the big picture. Big picture, we’re headed in the right direction and missing a bunch of key players.”
The Lakers are still seven games over .500 and sit at fifth in the Western Conference. So things are looking up for L.A. given some of the injuries and depth issues they’ve dealt with all season.
Lakers star Anthony Davis to be re-evaluated in one week
The Lakers could be without Anthony Davis for a little bit of time in a discouraging turn of events. L.A. diagnosed Davis with an abdominal muscle strain and said that he’ll be re-evaluated in one week on Wednesday morning.
L.A. plays three games before next Wednesday, on the road against the Washington Wizards, New York Knicks and L.A. Clippers. After that, they have four games until the All-Star Break. One against the Golden State Warriors, one against the Indiana Pacers and two against the Utah Jazz.
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