The Los Angeles Lakers suffered their third loss in four games on their road trip, this time falling to the Detroit Pistons 115-103. It was the most disappointing loss of the season so far as despite another excellent night from Anthony Davis, LeBron James and the rest of the team couldn’t muster up enough support.
James was solid on the night, finishing with 18 points, eight rebounds and 10 assists, but the Lakers as a whole were simply outworked by a young, active Pistons team. The Lakers fell behind by as many as 20 points and though they would cut the deficit to as low as five points, were unable to get over the hump.
As for what went wrong for the Lakers, LeBron felt they allowed the Pistons to play to their strengths by getting out in transition and killing the Lakers on the offensive glass, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“We took some early shots and let em get out in transition where they’re very elite at and then they also got some offensive rebounds. Free throw situation was not good for us. Play good defense, we give up offensive rebounds, it gets tipped around and they score off of that. So we just gotta do a much better job of that.”
The Lakers allowed 16 offensive rebounds to the Pistons, who just looked like they wanted it more on this night. James also pointed to their physicality, feeling the Lakers failed to match them early on and were unable to make up for it in the second half:
“Of course. We definitely have to match physicality depending on whatever game is being played, we have to match that. I don’t think we did that, as a unit we didn’t do a good job in the first half. In the second half we did, but we were already down 14 at half.”
The Lakers aren’t the best 3-point shooting team so to make up for it, they have often dominated inside and used their physicality, led by LeBron and Davis, to their advantage. If they don’t have that, it’s gonna be difficult for them to beat anyone.
After a strong start, the Lakers are in the midst of some early-season adversity and how they respond will show a lot about what this group is made of. It will be on LeBron and Davis to lead the way in whatever needs to be done for this team to get back on track.
Lakers’ LeBron James congratulates Vince Carter on jersey retirement
This loss in Detroit came after a much-needed win for the Lakers against the Toronto Raptors. That victory came on a night where franchise legend Vince Carter got his jersey retired and LeBron James congratulated the Hall of Famer on that accomplishment.
James said that Carter becoming the first Raptors player to have his jersey retired makes “all the sense in the world” based on everything he did for the franchise as well as how he popularized basketball in Canada.
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