The Los Angeles Lakers are in the midst of their four-game road trip, which has already featured some good measuring stick games for the team.
L.A. was able to start the trip 1-0 against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Saturday, potentially building up some momentum of picking up road wins with a bit more regularity. The purple and gold had themselves a huge test against the Philadelphia 76ers on Monday, who were 8-1 at home coming into the matchup.
However, the Lakers never found any consistency on both ends of the floor and the 76ers came out of the gates firing on all cylinders by making 22 out of their 46 3-point attempts. L.A. did not recover and got smacked by 44 points, 138-94.
Austin Reaves discussed what went wrong in the lopsided loss, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“They made a lot of 3s, we didn’t and they beat the shit out of us. I don’t know, we’ll go back and watch it to get better.”
Unfortunately, due to a lengthy 82-game schedule, losses like this happen from time to time and luckily, the Lakers can get it back on Wednesday against the Detroit Pistons which Reaves understands:
“I think you can go to all 30 teams and they have nights like these. What were we down at half, like 14 or 15 or something like that? We made a little good push at the end of the second quarter and then just couldn’t seem to get it going in the second half. The good thing is we play again in two days.”
Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey proved to be too much for the Lakers as they had 21 out of the team’s 26 free throw attempts. Reaves discussed the challenge of keeping guys like that off the line, which is usually a strength for the Lakers:
“I don’t know, they got two really good guys at getting to the free throw line in Maxey and Embiid. It’s almost an art these days getting to the free throw line. So you got to be very particular with how you guard them. Obviously you always want to win the free throw line but it wasn’t the case tonight.”
While Reaves and the players seem ready to move on and flush this game away, this loss still carried some weight as the 44-point loss tied for the fourth-worst loss in franchise history, which is not a good look for a team trying to contend for a championship.
Philadelphia scored at least 30 or more points in each quarter, proving that the Lakers’ defense did not show up and was not effective in cooling down the 76ers’ hot offense.
LeBron James: Lakers need to change ‘a lot’
Despite the injury bug hammering the purple and gold to begin the young season, the team is still above .500 at 10-8. But, there have been some lackluster performances, Monday being one of them and LeBron James believes ‘a lot’ has to change for this team to be successful.
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