The Los Angeles Lakers needed to string together significantly more wins than losses over a long stretch as they attempted to climb back into the Western Conference standings. Leaving January, Anthony Davis and company were 24-25 and slipping out of the Play-In Tournament picture. But the month of February helped turn the tide for Los Angeles.
The Lakers played 12 games in the month of February and finished 9-3. Within that month, they defeated the Boston Celtics without LeBron James and Davis in the lineup. They also had big wins against the New York Knicks and L.A. Clippers, the latter of which included a 21-point fourth quarter comeback, the largest of James’ career. Everything went right for the Lakers in February.
Davis spoke about the month and looked back on the success the team had. He knows they needed it, and urged the team to keep pushing forward.
“Obviously we’re trying to climb, it’s gonna take a lot more winning than losing to be where we want to be,” Davis said. “We’re in the race right there, I’m not sure what happened tonight around the league, but we’re continuously just trying to get better, work on ourselves, and get healthy. Get some of our guys back. And while doing that, staying in the fight, staying in the hunt. So it’s a good month for us. And we got a tough month of March coming up. But we’re at home, so we gotta take advantage of that.”
The 9-3 month did not lead to obvious movement in the standings, as they are still the No. 9 seed in the conference., However, they sit only 1.5 games back of the Sacramento Kings at No. 8 and three games back of the Phoenix Suns at No. 5. So if they continue to push, they’ll see more results in the near future.
One thing Davis knows they need to work on is defensive consistency.
“We have a lot of mental mistakes, miscommunications. A guy says one thing that other guy doesn’t honor it or we played the defense for the first 24 seconds and then an offensive rebound happens and then they make a shot. Or we turn the ball over and can’t get back in transition, live-ball turnovers. So I think communication will help with a lot of it and not having a lot of brain farts and mental breakdowns on the defensive end. Just stay solid and do your job. Do what you’re supposed to do and trust the guy behind you. Not making up things on the fly or not doing maybe what you think is right, because now no one’s on the same page and know what you’re doing.
“Then it’s tough because you don’t have any practice time to kind of go over some things. Obviously, back-to-back, so you’re off tomorrow and then come in, you can’t even walk through one of the best things in the league to kind of really go over and nitpick a few things on what they do. So you got to have a little 30 to 40-minute walkthrough before a game to cover one of the best teams, so it’s kind of tough scheduling, but it is what it is.”
The Lakers have a difficult March upcoming, with 11 games against teams with above .500 records. So they’ll need to clean up some things, as Davis says, if they want to continue their February success into March.
D’Angelo Russell says Lakers win over Clippers was good start for tough stretch
The 21-point comeback against the Clippers was a huge one for the Lakers, who really needed the win and D’Angelo Russell believes this can be the start of a good run for the team.
“It’s a huge win for us,” Russell said. “I think it was good. Obviously we got a back-to-back coming up, tough schedule coming out of All-Star. These next 20 games are gonna be huge for us, a key to our success. Starting off with this one I think is great.”
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