A tough loss to the Sacramento Kings raised the stakes for the Los Angeles Lakers’ Saturday night matchup against the Golden State Warriors.
The Lakers entered the night with a one-game lead over the Warriors in the standings, making it important for the former to earn a win to keep the latter from leapfrogging them. However, Los Angeles failed to get the job done as their defense fell apart when Anthony Davis was forced to leave the game after the first quarter.
Davis was having a dominant first quarter as he normally has a size advantage against Golden State, but he took a shot to the eye and was visibly in discomfort. Davis left for the locker room and was later ruled out for the remainder of the game.
After the loss, head coach Darvin Ham said Davis’ eye injury was the result of an inadvertent elbow and he didn’t return because he was unable to see.
“I think he got an elbow to the left eye. Wasn’t able to see out of that left eye, vision blurred,” Ham said. “Looking at the doctors, they were working on him from the time he left the floor and went back to the training room through halftime. The biggest thing is just making sure he’s OK and we’ll get an update on him pretty soon.”
Without Davis on the floor, the Warriors paraded into the paint and were able to score almost at will. Ham acknowledged it was difficult for the Lakers to get stops without their defensive anchor on the floor.
“As halftime was winding down, we got the word,” Ham said of when they knew Davis would be out. But Jaxson (Hayes) stepped in and played his ass off, played a hell of a game. A lot of energy, rebounded well. It shifts everything. When you lose one of your main pieces, it’s gonna change your rotation, it’s gonna change the groups and the lineups that you’re accustomed to having out there. It eliminates size, they’re a smaller team at the rim so it takes another 7-footer out of the game for us. It’s tough, but I thought we pushed through and offensively we got great looks, it just didn’t go down. But I thought we maintained well in spite of that unfortunate circumstance.”
As Ham mentioned, Jaxson Hayes did an admirable job filling in for Davis although he acknowledged that there are some things Davis does that are irreplaceable.
“Absolutely, because he knows how to play that cat and mouse game,” Ham said of Davis. “Next time we see these guys, if we decide to switch, obviously you got to switch up pitches and do a better job of when we switch, getting underneath Draymond. The guy that’s switching onto Draymond when he’s DHOing or setting a screen or whatever. Got to do a better job of staying in front of him and keeping a body in front of him and not moving up the floor if he does get in the pocket.
“We moved way too high up the floor and they were able to get some lobs. AD knows how to do it, and Jaxson will learn it as well, he does it some, but he’ll get much better at it, but AD knows how to play that cat and mouse game where you force Draymond into an indecisive floater. But give them credit, they’re a championship ballclub, they got their core championship players, a lot of other good talent around them, and they made plays.”
Davis has been the biggest advantage Los Angeles has over Golden State and without him on the floor, the team struggled on both ends. Not only does Davis dominate offensively, but defensively he’s able to blow up a lot of the actions that the Warriors like to run.
The loss dropped the purple and gold down to 10th in the standings, a precarious position to be in with just 14 games left in the regular season. Although the Lakers are basically locked into the Play-In Tournament, climbing up to at least the No. 8 seed should be the goal.
Darvin Ham called Lakers’ matchup against Warriors extremely important
Everyone in the Los Angeles organization understood how important the matchup was against Golden State because of how close they are record-wise. After their Friday practice, Ham emphasized that the game was extremely important for the Lakers, but they unfortunately came up short.
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