LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers had a prime opportunity at an easy win on Friday night, hosting a tanking Brooklyn Nets team that was coming off a 59-point loss to the L.A. Clippers.
The game did not play out that way, however, as Anthony Davis was a late scratch and the Lakers found themselves in a dogfight with the Nets late. Behind stellar performances from James and Austin Reaves though, the Lakers were able to escape with a 102-101 victory over Brooklyn.
After the game, James discussed his mentality in a game like that. “Find a way to win the game, no matter what,” he said.
“Every game in the NBA is going to be challenging. We knew after the loss that they had against the Clippers that we were going to get their better shot, and so we were ready for that, and they played good ball. We played good ball at times. We could have been a lot sharper, but we took the win for sure.”
With Davis and some other key pieces out, James reiterated that getting the win was the most important thing and now the Lakers can look at their mistakes and learn from them to be better moving forward.
“Every game is its own. We can’t base one game off the next. This league is too fragile to say, ‘OK, well, let’s pick up right where we left off [in the] second half of Miami.’ We can’t do that,” James said.
“One, we’re out our best player on the team (Anthony Davis). Trey [Jemison III]’s first minutes, he was put into a role where he didn’t even think he was going to play tonight and then next thing you know, he’s the backup center getting minutes. So, everybody’s roles had to just change. We’re not the same team tonight as far as our lineup, as far as our whole, complete group as we were in the Miami game. So every game has its own factors, and you try to figure out how you can be the best that night. And obviously, we were not the best tonight, but that’s what film is for. That’s what things we can clean up to get better for the next match, but now the Clippers is its own entity game, and we have to understand that and go from there.”
James is right that every game is its own entity and even though this Lakers team has a long way to go to get to where they want to be, it is a lot easier to learn from wins than it is from losses.
LeBron James tried to pump up crowd during difficult time
The last couple of weeks have been difficult for the Southern California community with LeBron James being among those who had to evacuate his home due to the wildfires.
With that being the case, James was hyping up the crowd a little more than usual on Friday night and explained why.
“Sports, in general, is always ways to build back the chemistry. Build back togetherness, bring back happiness. And I’m happy to be a part of this community and be able to bring that type of factor to it when we’re going through what we’re going through,” James said.
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