The Los Angeles Lakers will look back on their game Monday night against the Indiana Pacers as one that got away. With Anthony Davis and Russell Westbrook leading the scoring charge, the Lakers had things well in hand in the fourth quarter but got sloppy down the stretch, allowing for the Pacers to come back and steal the game on an Andrew Nembhard buzzer-beater.
Davis finished the game with 25 points, 13 rebounds, six assists and four blocks as he continued his outstanding stretch of play. But those numbers don’t matter in a loss and Davis pointed to two things that cost the Lakers in the end.
“Defensive rebounding,” Davis said when asked what went wrong in the fourth quarter. “Didn’t rebound the ball and transition, they got some open 3s in transition. That team was ready, in my opinion, ready to quit. We let them back in the game. Started messing with the game.
“The start of the fourth quarter, some tough shots led to some transition buckets — mainly 3s. That team has a lot of shooters on their team and we got scrambled in transition a lot off of some bad offense and they just cut the lead down one possession at a time. We got to do a better job, especially in transition. That was our biggest challenges tonight.”
Indeed, the Lakers allowed four offensive rebounds in that final quarter, the last of which led to the game-winning shot. Additionally, the Pacers hit six 3-pointers in the fourth, allowing them to climb back into the game when things could have been put away.
And while credit goes to the Pacers for continuing to fight, Davis made it clear that the Lakers beat themselves on this night. “This one stings, for sure,” Davis added. “Just being up 17 with 8.5 [minutes] to go. So I think the way we lost, it was all self-inflicted wounds. That’s one thing we talk about, not shooting ourselves in the foot. And everything that led up to this loss and their comeback was on us.
“So this one hurts a little bit more, but like I said, we really just need to watch the fourth quarter and just kinda see what happened.”
With an upcoming six-game road trip, the road for the Lakers is about to get even more difficult, making losses like these where everything was in hand hurt even more.
LeBron James believes Anthony Davis has been playing like the best player in the league
Even after sitting out a game, Davis continued his strong stretch of play for the Lakers in their contest against the Pacers. Davis continues to be the Lakers’ best player and LeBron James believes it stretches further than that.
LeBron spoke after the Lakers’ victory over the San Antonio Spurs in which Davis sat out and praised the team for holding down the fort while he was injured, but particularly Davis. LeBron said that Davis had been the best player in the NBA for the past couple weeks with how he’s performed on both sides of the court.
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