When Anthony Davis and the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Los Angeles Clippers on Christmas Day, the assumption would be there would be plenty of overreaction from the game.
This assumption proved to be correct as many decided to use the loss at a litmus test for what the team may or may not be capable of in June.
This is not a new practice in the league as fans and media alike love using the results of one game to form all sorts of conclusions about a team or player’s ceiling. However, this is not affecting Davis’ mindset as he knows this one loss counts as just that: one loss.
He is fully aware of the reasons they lost and what they can do to fix it and is now preparing for the game against the Portland Trail Blazers.
“It’s one game man. One game. You know, we’re looking at our next game against [the Trail Blazers] and we’ll learn from that game and from our film session and get ready for Portland,” Davis said going into depth on the subject. “And we see [the Clippers] two more times, we’re not stressing over a loss to the Clippers. We don’t like the way we lost, but we’re not end all because we lost one Christmas game. We’ll get ready, suit up for the next opponent, and be better.”
This is exactly the right mindset that all players and fans should have about this game. While the loss is certainly nothing to be happy about, there are plenty of things to learn from it. In addition, the Lakers have plenty of time to learn from it.
Despite four straight losses, the Lakers still have a strong lead for the Western Conference’s No. 1 seed and their schedule significantly lightens up after a back-to-back situation against the Trail Blazers and Dallas Mavericks.
This season will have plenty of ups and downs given how new the roster is and how long the season is, so it’s frivolous to stress over the result of one game. Davis isn’t and he’s prepared to get back to work to get back in the win column.