This preseason has been filled with ups and downs for the Los Angeles Lakers, but unfortunately, they ended up on a low note with a 133-86 blowout loss to the Sacramento Kings on the road.
With Anthony Davis out for precautionary reasons, Damian Jones drew the start but had trouble slowing down Domantis Sabonis in the lane. early Russell Westbrook also made his debut coming off the bench midway through the quarter, and he helped the Lakers keep pace with the Kings.
Sacramento started to gain some separation with their outside shooting, while Los Angeles struggled to knock down their own looks from downtown. The defense for the Lakers really let up toward the end of the period as the Kings knocked down several open shots, leaving them down 36-23.
Westbrook walked gingerly back to the locker room near the end of the quarter and was eventually ruled out for the rest of the night with a left hamstring injury.
The defensive woes for L.A. continued into the second quarter as they failed to protect the rim on several Sacramento drives. It quickly devolved even further as the team started to sputter on both ends of the floor, forcing another timeout from Darvin Ham.
Thomas Bryant and Austin Reaves provided some much-needed scoring in the half-court, and the Lakers cobbled enough stops to make a dent in the deficit. However, the momentum stopped there as the Kings quickly responded and the Lakers went into halftime trailing 65-44.
The energy to begin the third quarter was non-existent as Sacramento simply outworked L.A. to build their lead back up to 27. Ham seemed to recognize this as he subbed out James, but the bench unit also failed to produce any meaningful run to close the gap.
Matt Ryan was finally able to see some 3-pointers go down, but defensively the team was unable to stop the Kings from keeping it a near 30-point game. The situation went from bad to worse as Sacramento continued to pour it on and L.A. went into the final period down 95-62.
With the game clearly out of hand, Ham emptied out the bottom of his bench to finish out the night and the Lakers would walk away with another poor loss on their preseason record.
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