The Phoenix Suns are a young team that plays super hard, presenting a tough challenge for the Los Angeles Lakers in the second night of a back-to-back.
Despite coming in winners of seven straight, the Lakers weren’t up for the challenge on Monday night as they were blown out by the Suns to drop to 15-5 on the year.
Turnovers were a big issue in the loss as the Lakers gave it away 21 times, leading to 32 points for the Suns. Phoenix also had 28 fastbreak points compared to just two for L.A.
That is not a recipe for success and it’s what LeBron James pointed to when discussing the loss.
“Turnovers, transition points, obviously on our home floor and against a disruptive defense like that, you can’t turn the ball over that much,” James said. “[They were] pretty much all pick-sixes. They not only turned us over, they were able to convert.”
The Lakers appeared to be a little tired playing for the second night in a row, although that excuse doesn’t fly for James as he sat out on Sunday night. Despite that, he finished with just 10 points, zero rebounds and three assists on 3-of-10 shooting in 31 minutes for L.A.
After the game, LeBron discussed how that lack of energy impacted the Lakers.
“I think they were a step ahead of us, for sure,” he admitted. “Obviously we had a game last night, obviously I didn’t participate in it, but we had to dig deep even to win that game. We were able to close it out kind of early in the fourth but we still had to play our guys. We looked like we could’ve had a little bit more energy against a team that played that way, so they took advantage of that.”
The Lakers have been playing well to start the season though, so James is not getting overly concerned with one loss.
“Listen, that happens. It’s a long NBA season, but we understand that,” LeBron said. “That’s a very good team over there and they took us out of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to execute and we have to learn from that.”
LeBron James not concerned about Lakers refocusing on road trip
The Lakers are now heading out on a tough three-game East Coast trip and need to play better if they want it to be a successful one, which LeBron James isn’t concerned about.
“The road trips should always refocus you no matter how you’re playing,” he said. “I don’t think [we needed] to have a good game tonight to refocus us.”
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