The same old story for the Los Angeles Lakers happened again after they suffered yet another blowout loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night.
The Lakers have been blown out in all three of their losses to the Timberwolves during the 2021-22 season and their recent loss followed the same formula where they went down big early and failed to make a comeback in the second half. The entire offense was completely off the mark, and defensively they had no answers for Karl Anthony-Towns and Anthony Edwards, who took turns torching them throughout the night.
With how poorly the Lakers were playing, the Timberwolves, specifically Patrick Beverley, made it a point to trash talk them for bad plays and Russell Westbrook responded after the game when asked about their taunting and celebrating.
“I honestly don’t pay no mind to it,” Westbrook said. “Maybe other guys, but they weren’t talking to me. They were talking to individual guys particularly, but the trash-talking doesn’t bother me none. Nobody over there has done anything in this league that makes me put my eyes up ‘oh, they’re talking trash, let me respond.’ It’s fine, they’re good, they won a game, happy for them and we’ll move on to the next one and that’s that.”
It seems like teams are happy to punk the Lakers considering they rarely ever fight back, but Westbrook said that instead of playing angry, they simply need to compete.
“Individually, you got to ask each individual. Everybody is wired a little differently, I can’t really speak for everybody else on if it gets a rise or not. Angry? We should compete. Angry is a strong word to say, I wouldn’t say that. I would just say that we need to compete and when you compete, everything else will kind of take care of itself along the way.”
No player or team should be told they need to compete harder, yet the issue persists with the Lakers who have a hard time turning things up a notch when they need to. Minnesota happily poured it on when they were up double digits while Los Angeles shrunk away and proceeded to get beat the rest of the way.
With a Play-In Tournament spot on the line, it is anyone’s guess as to how they will perform down the stretch. The upcoming schedule does not get much easier, especially because their next game is against a Toronto Raptors team that just embarrassed them a few days ago.
Talen Horton-Tucker thinks Lakers need to remain positive on road trip
Talen Horton-Tucker was unfortunately ruled out midway through the matchup against the Timberwolves after re-aggravating an ankle sprain. However, the youngster believes L.A. can right the ship so long as they stay positive on their current four-game road trip.
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