The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a disastrous 128-110 loss to the Dallas Mavericks in which they never came close to competing on the same level as the hosts.
Dallas went on an 8-0 run out of the gate, setting the tone for the clash. Luka Doncic ended up with a 34-point triple-double, shooting 52.2% from the field.
Doncic kept racking up buckets and dishing out dimes to his teammates along the perimeter with ease. The Mavericks made 20 triples against the Lakers, shooting 43.5% from downtown.
Stanley Johnson took the blame for letting Doncic and Co. dominate L.A. on Tuesday. “I was pretty lousy,” he said.
“I got to be a lot better than that. Whatever happens, I got to play hard. Whatever happens, guys shouldn’t be playing that easy. I don’t care what the game plan is or whatever, I have to try and take the challenge a little better.
“I tried to pick [Doncic] up. He’s a really good player, man. I give it to him. He is pretty good. I got to be a lot better. Figure out ways to stop these guys. Slow them down. I didn’t do none of that today. He just kind of had his way. The whole team kind of had their way the whole time and I think that starts with me. We came in the game, eight points in a row. It was 8-0 before we knew it and when your best player, if LeBron [James] gets eight points in a row, we’d be pretty damn good, too.”
Following the Lakers’ slow start, the Mavericks’ lead ballooned to nearly 40 points in the third quarter. Johnson didn’t want to sugarcoat things after the game and acknowledged L.A. took a beating in Dallas.
“We just got our butt whooped. Straight up,” he said. “Whatever spirit or whatever, they kicked our ass. It was 30 points pretty much the whole game. I don’t know how else you want to put it. We got to be a whole lot better than that.”
Frank Vogel says Lakers’ performance against Mavericks was ‘just poor across the board’
Head coach Frank Vogel offered a similarly candid assessment of the Lakers’ performance.
“[W]e just didn’t execute well enough and play with enough toughness, IQ, intelligence, focus and fight in that half. Not acceptable, just a poor performance across the board, coaches, players, everybody,” Vogel said.
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