Well that was fun. The 7 game winning streak is over and in our first test against 5 teams with winning records we seemed content to play a little too care-free and never adjusted to the intensity of Phoenix’s pressure. Toss in the return of the “Who Is This Guy?!” Laker defense and you have all the required ingredients for a blowout loss. Tip you hat to Phoenix, who came into the game geeked and ready enough to sustain the loss of franchise player Devin Booker after a scant 10 minutes of action. Hopefully this can serve as a quick reminder that, in this league, you can’t just show up. You need to be prepared to go to battle.
- Luka trying to do too much in this one. The stat line looks pretty solid right up until you get to the turnovers. 9 turnovers to 5 assists tells the story of the game in a nutshell. Forcing plays that just aren’t there and not really ever adapting to the defensive pressure deployed by Phoenix. This was a game with a quiet whistle, if there’s one thing Luka could do better at it’s recognizing when the refs just aren’t going to call certain fouls in that game. As a rule, the Lakers are overly dependent on drawing fouls and, when those calls don’t come, getting overly invested in chirping back at the refs. Did Phoenix push the boundary of physicality? Absolutely, but that’s something that we’ll need to be able to adjust to better going forward.
- Taking scrubs seriously. Once Devin Booker (21.5 ppg) went down, and when you add in that fact that the Suns were missing Jalen Green (15.5 ppg) and Grayson Allen (17.9 ppg) and the scoring punch was, in theory, off the floor. Collin Gillespie, Dillon Brooks and last season’s Laker fan favorite Jordan Goodwin picked up the slack and nobody on our team seemed prepared for it as we failed to apply meaningful defensive pressure to stop any of them. It’s easy to look at guys who don’t play a lot and expect them to flounder when their moment comes. Nick Smith Jr. on our own team had such a moment and went off and it’s on the staff and the team to understand that anyone can be a Nick Smith Jr. on the other team on any given night. Let a guy who doesn’t play a lot make a shot or two and suddenly you’re in for a very long night. Let three of those guys shake loose and you’ll get blown out, like we did.
- Lakers need Gabe and LaRavia to hit shots. Especially with Smart dealing with a bad back, which can be tricky to come back quickly from the older you are (as I know from personal experience lol), our bench can fall into a very deferential style of play and just settle for the shots Luka, Reaves and LeBron can create for them. That won’t cut it all season, both LaRavia and Vincent can more aggressively hunt their own shots. LaRavia in particular needs to work on his handle because he doesn’t handle pressure well while dribbling and once he turns the ball over. Vincent seems quite content to let the play come to him on every single possession and we saw in preseason how well he can play with the ball in his hands. This needs to be addressed sooner than later, both these guys need to be averaging 10 ppg for the bench to have any relevance. Currently Jake is at 9.0 ppg and Gabe is an anemic 3.9 ppg.
- LeBron’s streak continues. With a three in the 4th The King hit his 10 point milestone. And there was much rejoicing (yay).
- Rui’s vanishing act. 1 shot. One. You can argue that part of the Sun’s game plan was making sure the release pass to Rui was covered by a lengthy defender at all times. You could argue that the Lakers didn’t look for Rui often enough. You could argue that Rui didn’t do much to get himself involved. You’d be right on all three. The Lakers, as a whole, don’t run nearly enough plays for their best shooter. Additionally, when the defense is keyed in on him, Rui needs to be better at adjusting his level of aggression in demanding the ball. The staff needs to recognize when the outlet pass from the drive is being covered and help make an in-game adjustment. All parties involved need to work on this because to have a weapon like Hachimura go basically un-used in a game we lost by 17 makes no sense.
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