The Los Angeles Lakers got another hot start from Luka Doncic on Saturday night with 29 points in the first half. The only issue was no one else really showed up and the Lakers wound up getting ran out of their own gym by the Chicago Bulls in a rough loss.
There was a lot of excitement surrounding the game as LeBron James and Rui Hachimura returned to the lineup, putting the Lakers at full strength for the first time in a while. They looked rusty though and the rest of the team lacked a rhythm as well, resulting in the blowout loss.
Despite the disappointing performance, Doncic feels the Lakers are in a good spot heading into the final stretch of the regular season now that they are back healthy.
“I think we’re in a great spot. Obviously, today wasn’t a good game for us,” Doncic admitted. “But I think we are in a great spot, and we have to battle every game to not get in the Play-In [Tournament] and try to get the highest seed we can.”
Doncic also acknowledged that the first game back for injured players and teams usually isn’t pretty.
“I think it was more just basketball. It’s always great to have people back, but that first game is always tough, I could tell. And they made a lot of shots,” Doncic said.
With a tough road trip on the horizon, Doncic wants the Lakers to learn from this loss, but not think about it too much.
“I mean, the plan, or I don’t know how to say, is to go out there next game and do what we can do,” he said. :Not forget about this game but learn from it. But at the game of the game, if you lose by one or you lose by 40, it’s a lot. So it doesn’t really matter how much you lose by. We can’t afford for this game to push us back. We just gotta move forward from it.”
Luka Doncic takes responsibility for turnovers
The Lakers giving up 146 points to the Bulls was a season-high, and a big reason for it was the team turnover the ball over 21 times leading to 27 points. Luka Doncic accounted for seven of those turnovers and despite finishing with a team-high 34 points, he took responsibility for his miscues.
“I think they scored a lot of transition points, especially with my turnovers,” he said. “[I’ve] got to do that better. That’s on me. I can’t be losing the ball seven times. That is way too many for me.”
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