It was a tough night for LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers on the offensive end against the Sacramento Kings on Thursday night. Only two Lakers — Austin Reaves and Anthony Davis — finished above 20 points while James and Davis combined to shoot a measly 15-for-41 from the field. As a team, L.A. shot 40.4% for the game.
And yet, despite all those poor offensive figures, the Lakers found a way to win. And not just win, but oust the Kings by 13 with a near-dominant defensive effort in the second half. L.A. held the Kings to 42 points in the second half and 20 points in the fourth quarter. They won the rebounding battle and turnover battle convincingly.
So when LeBron looked back on the win, he was most proud of the way the Lakers stepped up on the defensive end when things weren’t working otherwise, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Our defense stood out the most. Obviously when you shoot 40% on the road, there’s a couple factors that have to happen. You can’t turn the ball over and you gotta get timely stops and we did that throughout the course of the game.”
This has been another notch in the Lakers’ belt as they have steadily been improving on the defensive end. They even have the best defense in the league over their last four games. And for James, the method to continuing that improvement is relatively simple:
“Just get stops. Defensively, I think the No. 1 thing is being accountable in holding your guy and understanding you can’t just let blow-bys happen or whatever the case may be and also being on a string with the other four guys on the floor. It starts with communication and I think we’ve been communicating at a high level over the last four games, like you mentioned. We’re gonna need to continue to do that.”
If the Lakers can show that the recent improvement on defense is consistent, it would greatly increase their margin for error on the offensive end in games like Thursday. L.A. shouldn’t have to be scoring at elite efficiency in order to barely escape with wins.
And with all of the Lakers players saying how simple of a fix the defense should be, it’s good to finally start seeing some results of that.
Lakers win over Kings was favorite for JJ Redick
For all the same reasons as LeBron James, Lakers head coach JJ Redick was a big fan of what the team was able to do against the Kings. In fact, he called it his favorite win of the season because they found ways to dominate despite looking less than sharp on the offensive end.
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