Anthony Davis was dominant on Sunday night as the Los Angeles Lakers picked up their third consecutive win with a 150-145 victory over the Indiana Pacers. Davis finished with 36 points and 16 rebounds in the win as the Lakers finally seem to be rounding into their best form of the year at the right time.
Unfortunately for the Lakers, it has done little to help them in the standings as the teams right above them continue to win as well. LeBron James has previously said that the Lakers have to focus solely on what they can control and while Davis admitted it’s impossible not to peek at the standings, he echoed that same sentiment.
“A little. I mean, it’s everywhere right now, but for us, we’re just trying to control what we can, and that’s winning one game at a time,” Davis said. “Obviously, we try to look and figure out how far we are behind the sixth seed, but you stress yourself out.
“Putting too much pressure on yourself and constantly looking at it but we’re ninth right now so we just got to continue to play our style of basketball and focus on us and take it one game at a time and worry about winning that game and if we continuously do that, then the rest will take care of itself.”
The Lakers certainly need to keep that focus as they are set to embark on a six-game road trip that kicks off Tuesday night in Milwaukee. How they perform on this trip will completely decide if there is any chance at moving up in the standings and Davis said the plan is to go undefeated.
“Six. We want to win every game,” Davis added. “I think on this trip, we beat everybody… So we know we’re capable, but it’s the road. It’s going to be tough, but we got the capability of winning each game. We got to approach it that way.”
There is no doubt that the Lakers have shown they can hang with any team on any given night, but getting those types of performances consistently has been the issue. Davis continuing to play at this level would go a long way towards the Lakers reaching that goal and having a very successful road trip.
Anthony Davis not happy with Lakers’ defensive performance vs. Pacers
Getting the win over the Pacers was the most important thing, but that doesn’t mean the Lakers’ performance was perfect. In particular, while the Lakers scored 150 points, they also gave up 145, which didn’t sit well with Anthony Davis.
“We allowed them to score 145. That’s a big fourth quarter from them, 46 I think,” Davis noted. “Terrible defensively. I mean, they hit some shots towards the end, some deep 3s.
“We can do what we want offensively, as you can see tonight, but we got to be able to defend, especially when we got to team up like that, try to give them no life. At this point in the season, when there’s a win, we’ll take it. But we got to learn from it as well.”
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