The Los Angeles Lakers put forth their worst performance of the season against the Cleveland Cavaliers, falling 134-110 in a game that was done by the second quarter. Anthony Davis had his lowest scoring night of the early season, but still had a solid night overall with 22 points, 13 rebounds, two assists and two steals.
The Lakers did themselves in with 20 turnovers, allowing for plenty of easy buckets for the Cavaliers. Additionally, L.A. had just 21 assists on their 38 made baskets while Cleveland had 37 assists on the night. The ball and player movement that was prevalent in the first four games just wasn’t clicking on this night.
Considering the Lakers are still in the beginning stages of learning this new system under JJ Redick, some growing pains should be expected. But Davis was not willing to use that as an excuse for their poor performance against the Cavs, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Not expected. We know what we’re doing, even though we’re a new team. We’ve shown in four games what we’re capable of doing on the offensive end when we’re organized, especially in the first three games. And then, even the game against Phoenix, the first game on this road trip, we had great spacing, we got great looks offensively. This is the first game where we regressed, and we were god-awful offensively because of our spacing. Nothing about us being a new team… We just didn’t do it tonight.”
Davis refusing to offer up excuses is more of the accountability that has been seen from this entire Lakers team over the past few days as they’ve dropped their first two games of the season. Davis has high expectations for this team and expects a certain level of performance that wasn’t met in Cleveland.
As he said, the organization, spacing and movement on offense were just fine in the first four games so there is no reason for it to have not been the case in Cleveland. Overall, that mindset is exactly what the Lakers need and will ultimately help this team reach its potential as they continue to grow as a unit.
Lakers’ Anthony Davis plans to play through jammed hip
Health is always the biggest question mark when it comes to Anthony Davis and there were undoubtedly some concerns when he hurt his hip in the first quarter of the loss to the Cavaliers. But Davis isn’t worried about it at all.
The Lakers superstar admitted to tweaking the hip but insisted that everything is fine and that he plans on playing through it.
“Yeah, tweaked my hip in the first quarter… A little sore. Kind of jammed it. But I’ll be fine, it was just bothering me throughout the course of the game. It isn’t going to stop me from playing.”
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