After an abysmal performance in Cleveland, Anthony Davis gave a very honest review of the Lakers offense against the Cavs.
The Lakers were bad against the Cavs on Wednesday. Really bad. That isn’t just a takeaway from the game, that’s the words from the Lakers themselves postgame.
There were a lot of things that went wrong for the purple and gold in their trip to Cleveland. Most of that came on the offensive end.
The Lakers shot just 6-28 from the 3-point line, turned the ball over 20 times, managed only five offensive rebounds and were outscored by 12 points in the paint. They were also outscored by 33 points on the 3-point line.
Other than that, though, things went great!
Their offensive struggles were apparent to everyone, including the Lakers. Unorganized was a common theme to describe the Lakers offense in the locker room postgame, including from Anthony Davis.
“Offensively, this is the first time that I can say, offensively…we weren’t organized,” Davis said. “Our spacing was bad, which caused a ton of turnovers, a ton of bad shots, which led to transition for them then points off turnovers. We didn’t shoot many threes tonight. We had 20-plus turnovers tonight which is uncharacteristic of us. Just a bad game on both ends of the floor, honestly and it started with our first five.
“Like I said, we didn’t come out, defensively how we were supposed to. And then offensively, we were just bad. So, we can’t allow that to happen. Obviously, still early season, but we have three more games left on this road trip, and these are all three must-wins.”
The “must-win” comment should raise an eyebrow first. It likely stems from the fact that they want to have a winning road trip. Fortunately for them, wrapping up the trip with stops in Toronto and Detroit before going to Memphis should give them at least a chance to win every game.
Back to the offense on Wednesday, though, this is part of the expected growing pains from the team. Over the summer, Davis spoke while at Team USA training camp about Redick and noted that everyone knew it would take time.
The Lakers might have skewed things a bit by winning their first three games of the season, but this will still be a process. Teams are going to get tape on the Lakers and be able to properly gameplan against them, which will require better execution and adjustments from the team.
Still, when posed with the question of if these types of struggles should be expected this season, AD refused to use that as an excuse.
“It’s not expected. We know what we’re doing,” Davis said. “Even though we’re a new team, we’ve shown in four games what we’re capable of doing on the offensive end when we’re organized. Especially the first three games and then even the game against Phoenix, the first game on this road trip, we had great spacing; we got great looks offensively. This is, like I said, the first game where we regressed and we were like god awful offensively because of our spacing.
“It’s nothing about us being a new team. It’s nothing about us not knowing what to do or whatever. Like, we know exactly where we’re supposed to be on the floor and what we’re supposed to be doing. We just didn’t do it tonight.”
Ideally, the team can bounce back and get some things right against Toronto and Detroit. The good news is, it could hardly be worse than it was in Cleveland!
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.