The Los Angeles Lakers suffered possibly their worst loss of the year on Friday against the struggling San Antonio Spurs. Despite missing D’Angelo Russell, Cam Reddish and Anthony Davis, L.A. still should have handled a Spurs team that lost 18 straight games heading into the matchup.
However, it was a wire-to-wire win for San Antonio as they looked to be a way more confident team on the second go-around with the Lakers. The Spurs starting lineup was all in double figures, plus Cedi Osman putting up 15 points and Zach Collins scoring 16.
San Antonio snapped their franchise-record losing streak by winning 129-115, and the Lakers ended their Texas road trip on a sour note.
Malachi Branham, an up-and-coming guards on the Spurs roster, is a fellow St. Vincent-St. Mary alumni, the same high school as LeBron James. After Friday’s game, James showed some love to Branham as he is another alumni who is producing in the NBA, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“It’s just great to have a couple alum guys in the NBA. That’s pretty cool. We were both coached by the same coach, Coach Drew, and to see Malachi here and making plays out on the floor, it’s always a proud moment for myself. Me and my group, we kind of set the standard and guys like Malachi have kept it going so definitely happy for him.”
Branham is averaging 8.8 points, 2.4 assists and 1.7 rebounds on 44.2 percent from the field and 30.8 percent from behind the arc for the Spurs this season. But the guard put up a solid outing against the Lakers, scoring 12 points, eight assists and four rebounds on 5-for-8 from the field and 2-for-3 from distance. Only 20-years-old, he has shown some upside and is the making of becoming a solid guard in the league, which James seems to realize.
San Antonio is still years away from becoming a serious team in the Western Conference, but with pieces like Branham surrounding Victor Wembanyama, it will speed up the process of a rebuild. The four-time champion of course knows the game inside and out, so for him to pay that respect to the second-year guard certainly carries some weight.
With his 39th birthday coming up at the end of the month, James has played with a ton of different players, and Branham is the new generation he is playing with in his 21st year.
LeBron James hopes Lakers roster can get healthy
Injuries have not been kind to the Lakers as they seemed to nearing full strength but L.A.’s game on Friday was a setback as three starting players sat out on the finale of the trip. James hopes the team gets healthy for this upcoming stretch of games to close out the month.
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