Luka Doncic shined in the Los Angeles Lakers’ preseason finale, playing 32 minutes and finishing with 31 points, five rebounds, nine assists, one block and one steal on 8-of-16 shooting.
The Lakers played all of their healthy rotation players for a majority of the night though, and they still could not pull away from the shorthanded Sacramento Kings, who came back late to earn the victory.
It’s just the preseason so there’s no reason to be overly concerned, but Doncic wasn’t happy with the Lakers’ lack of physicality to begin the game.
“I think we started a little bit slow, not being physical,” he said after the game. “I think when we start games being physical is when we’re at our best. So we need to be more physical for sure, getting the ball in the pick-and-rolls. So just be more physical.”
The Lakers open up the regular season on Tuesday night against the Golden State Warriors, and Doncic knows they still have some things to clean up before then.
“Obviously we didn’t win, but like JJ said there were a lot of good things,” Doncic said. “There’s some things we need to go through and clear up. There was a lot of good things after that first quarter, so just got from there. We have two more practices, so we need to clean up some things.”
As Doncic said, the Lakers will have two practices before Opening Night and he wants the focus to be on increasing physicality.
“I mean, obviously practice is different. In practice we are more physical, but like I said, we need to work on our physicality. Sometimes we’re gonna have a small group out there, sometimes we’re gonna have a bigger group out there. Obviously there’s some stuff to clean up. We start on Tuesday but obviously I think the physicality.”
The Lakers’ roster isn’t the most physical one, especially with LeBron James out, but Doncic is right that they can and need to play with more aggression to make up for it.
Luka Doncic happy with Lakers’ playmaking
One of the positives Luka Doncic took away from the Lakers’ loss to the Kings was the team’s playmaking.
“I think it’s very important,” he said. “I see we had what, like 28 assists and that’s amazing. We could’ve had a lot more, I think I missed like three or four lobs that I normally get. But I think it’s great. There were a lot of possessions where everybody touched the ball, everybody was moving. So I think it’s very important to do that in the regular season.”
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