After getting a week off for the annual NBA All-Star break, the Los Angeles Lakers returned to action on Thursday night when they traveled to take on the Golden State Warriors.
Matchups between LeBron James and Stephen Curry should always be treasured, but unfortunately it didn’t happen this time with the former missing the game with an ankle injury. As a result, the Lakers weren’t able to keep up with Curry and the Warriors in a 128-110 loss.
Anthony Davis typically does well against the smaller Warriors and that was the case early as he had a putback for the first bucket of the game. Stephen Curry responded with a pair of triples, however, to give Golden State an early lead.
After a slow start for the Lakers outside of Davis, they eventually got going with Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura connecting from deep to tie the game at 14.
The stars took over from there as Davis and Curry were getting buckets at will for their teams and the Warriors ended up leading 31-28 at the end of the first quarter.
L.A.’s bench did a nice job to begin the second quarter, regaining the lead with some nice two-way play notably from Max Christie and Jaxson Hayes. The same could be said for Warriors backup center Trayce Jackson-Davis though as he did a nice job keeping it close for his team.
The Warriors were eventually able to take the lead back with a run on another barrage of 3s, lead of course by Curry. Andrew Wiggins then had a putback at the buzzer so the Lakers went into the halftime locker room trailing 67-56.
Darvin Ham made a halftime adjustment by moving Davis onto Jonathan Kuminga so he could roam, but it didn’t matter much as the Warriors stayed hot from deep. Curry had a circus layup and then another triple, extending Golden State’s lead to 15.
Davis continued to try to do his part by scoring inside and the Lakers were able to get the deficit back to nine. That was short-lived, however, as he did not receive much help and then Kuminga had another buzzer-beater for the Warriors to get the lead back to 98-82 going into the fourth.
The Lakers showed some life to begin the fourth with Christie and D’Angelo Russell making back-to-back triples. The Warriors again had a quick response though with Wiggins scoring seven quick points.
At that point the game was essentially out of reach as the Lakers simply could not get enough stops to mount any sort of comeback.
What’s next for the Lakers
The Lakers will be back in action on Friday night when they host the San Antonio Spurs. It will mark the only time rookie phenom Victor Wembanyama plays the Lakers in L.A., which should make for a fun matchup, especially if James is back in the lineup.
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