The Los Angeles Lakers began their lives without LeBron James, who is expected to miss at least a week or two in a tense gro caliber with a 111-108 road loss to Brooklyn Net on Monday.
Luka Doncic finished with 22 points, 12 assists and 12 rebounds. It was their second triple double since joining the Lakers, but without James on the floor, the Nets would defend everything with Doncic and the Lakers couldn’t pay them.
Given the circumstances, it is not a terrible and surprising development. With others making 4-for-3 plays behind the scenes, these superstars who are blitzed by defense can only do that much if others aren’t taking advantage of overload defense.
You need timing and rhythm. This is an old cliché that everyone is on the same page. This is easier than with teams like the Lakers who add dominant works like Doncic and abandon a lot of lineups that don’t play a lot of time together.
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Now, when you have two intelligent and skilled players like Doncic and James in the court, especially together, you can hide many of these “know each other.”
Without James, however, the subtleties of the connection that keeps the NBA offense flowing, not to mention his own production, will make it much more difficult to run on the spot in the starting lineup (Doncic with Austin Reeves, Daltonnecht, Gab Vincent and Alex Lenn hadn’t played a minute to match the glass before Monday night.
James wasn’t the only one out there. It was also Dorian Finney Smith and Louis Fatimura. And when Jaxson Hayes could, and as often as he did, began to really settle down as a precise kind of short-roll connector, he went out too, and it was there.
Still, Lakers coach JJ Redick was not in the mood to make excuses after the game. Redick categorizes his team’s performance as a “very low-level communication game,” and says that “being predatory is not what it is like.” [not] Excuses for how I played basketball tonight. ”
“I think taking shortcuts tonight was the overall idea,” Reddick said. “They scored 20 points in our gambling. [defensively]. They had 16 offensive rebounds. We watched the ball all night. They probably made six or seven conflict-free 3s. Just a shortcut. You want to be a good team, you want to win in the NBA, you have to do hard things.
“We couldn’t even cross over to each other,” Reddick continued, visibly annoyed. “We couldn’t get into the attack. We literally run the ball screen on the half court… I don’t know what we were doing.”
Doncic, despite being extremely effective as a playmaker and downhill creator, hasn’t been shot well with the Lakers, and hasn’t been shot well with the Mavericks before he was traded. He made eight out of 26 shots on Monday while missing seven of his 10 3-pointers.
“[We] Doncic said. “I think we did a really good job and started the game. But then we just let go of the ropes. We’re comfortable.”
This would have been a big night for Reeves to step up in James’ absence, but he was off as well, finishing 3-5 with 3-5.
“I thought I played incredibly bad,” Reaves admitted. “When Bron came out, I had to get better, and I wasn’t. That’s one of the reasons we lost.”
The Internet (22-42) doesn’t make life easier for anyone. They finally accept the incentive they have to fight the rest of their paths and seem to have lost seven straight before Monday. But even when they lose to a good team, they push them to the limit.
In that seven-game winning streak, they turned 22 with the Warriors in the fourth quarter, leading Oklahoma City. It’s not shocking to beat the Lakers team playing without James, even if Redick and the company don’t use it as an excuse.
As reality is, James will be decent, and the Lakers’ upcoming schedule is not a cakewalk in the next six games, where the next six games will face Milwaukee, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, Denver and Milwaukee.
And these are important games to say the least. Monday’s loss left the Lakers (40-23) behind Denver. Denver put Oklahoma City in the West third (they were tied in a loss line), with one game left in Memphis fourth and 19 games left in Houston fifth.
