The Los Angeles Lakers suffered their second blowout loss in three games on Thursday, falling 133-110 to the Oklahoma City Thunder as a compact road trip came to an end. Squeezed in the middle of the two losses was a blowout win against the Detroit Pistons where star LeBron James started to feel more confident about what the Lakers have with their team this season.
But things can change quickly in the NBA, especially when a team is blown out for the second time in four nights. Fortuntely, James — a player who has seen his fair share of regular season struggles turn into postseason successes — has more confidence in the Lakers than the recent results suggest.
James recognizes what the Lakers need to fix, but focused more on the fatigue that comes with playing three games in four nights on the road and attributed the loss largely to that, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“I thought we played really good ball [in] our first quarter. But after that you could start seeing the three in four nights, the back-to-back, the bodies that we don’t have start to wear on us, especially versus a young team like OKC.”
It’s not just a fatigue thing for James and the Lakers, though. He still feels that the Lakers need more time to figure out what they are once their team is fully healthy:
“I have no idea what we are. How? We don’t have our group yet. I know what some of us individually are, but as far as a team, we don’t have our group yet. I don’t know. We haven’t had enough minutes with our group to be like OK, this is the starting group, we got the guys coming in, we got a good rhythm. I mean, we’re over .500. We’re 11-9 with literally not ever having our same group. That’s pretty impressive.”
The Lakers have had players in and out of the lineup all season thus far. It feels as though nearly the entire Lakers core has missed at least one game with several key rotation players — Jarred Vanderbilt, Cam Reddish, Gabe Vincent and Rui Hachimura — missing a large chunk of games.
So through 20 games, the Lakers are still figuring themselves out. And it starts with getting their full rotation healthy as quickly as possible.
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