After a rough loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, the Los Angeles Lakers continued their road trip against the Miami Heat on Wednesday night.
The Lakers are in the midst of midseason funk and they cobbled together probably their worst overall showing of the 2024-25 season as they were blown out by the Heat. Los Angeles Lakers 134-93, though the score still doesn’t reflect just how poorly the team played on both ends of the floor.
Not only did the Lakers suffer multiple prolonged offensive droughts, but their defense was non-existent as the defensive-minded Heat somehow lit them up in every area on the floor. Tyler Herro broke the game open in the third quarter when he hit seven of his nine 3-pointers, effectively ending any hope of Los Angeles making a comeback.
It was an embarrassing and shameful performance that even had Magic Johnson tweeting his frustrations with the team on his personal X account:
I’m embarrassed for the Lakers. They were down 32 points to the Miami Heat 105-72 at the end of the third quarter.
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) December 5, 2024
Head coach JJ Redick called the Lakers’ poor third quarter against the Denver Nuggets an aberration, but it’s looking more like the norm recently. Los Angeles has a lack of competitive spirit and fight in them that rears its head once they go down big and it was on full display against Miami who poured it on at their expense.
The only bright side was that LeBron James seemed to get back into an offensive rhythm after a rough stretch shooting the basketball, but besides that there weren’t any positives to take away from the game. Anthony Davis followed up a woeful game against the Timberwolves with his worst one of the season, scoring only eight points in 31 minutes.
There are numerous issues with the roster as currently constructed, but at this point it doesn’t seem like they have many answers. The front office needs to make some changes via the trade market to give the Lakers any sort of shot of competing, though right now it’s hard to imagine that teams will come calling trying to help them.
Anthony Davis believes Lakers’ recent offense has too much randomness to it
Anthony Davis struggled to get anything going against Miami, a troubling trend after his hot start to the year scoring. When evaluating the Lakers’ offense, Davis admitted that he thinks there’s too much randomness to it and their spacing has been off.
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