Any time a team plays a pace, turnovers are inevitably going to be an issue. For the Los Angeles Lakers, there have been plenty of nights where they have had issues taking care of the basketball. Russell Westbrook is normally the primary culprit, but the team as a whole has struggled with turnovers throughout the season.
However, it was completely different story in the Lakers’ win against the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday night as they only turned the ball over five times.
LeBron James noted that the lack of turnovers was the reason why they came away with a victory.
“That’s the reason we won the game,” James said. “We won the game because we did not turn the ball over tonight. When we get shots at the goal, we can be very dangerous. We weren’t shooting the ball well at all and because we didn’t turn the ball over, we caught fire. We caught fire and got shots at the goal and didn’t turn the ball over.
“Especially against a team like Sac with one of the fastest, if not the fastest, guards in the league in De’Aaron Fox, if you turn the ball over, it results in fastbreak points on the other end. That was great t hold them to six, we held them to six fastbreak points because we did not turn the ball over.”
Aside from not committing turnovers, James made timely baskets in the fourth quarter after having a rough shooting game for most of the night. He attributed his success to the work he has put in.
“Just the work I’ve put into my craft over the years. I missed a lot of really good looks early on and my teammates just kept telling me ‘just bring us home!’ When you continue to get the confidence from your teammates, continue to trust the work that you put in, you live with the results no matter what.”
James and the Lakers played their cleanest game to date and they will have a good chance to beat the Atlanta Hawks on Friday if they can limit their mistakes.
James on Westbrook not committing any turnovers against Kings
While Westbrook shares the most blame for the team’s turnover issues, he did not commit any against the Kings. James explained that Westbrook and the team understand that limiting careless turnovers helps them win games.
“I think that as a team, we understand that when we don’t turn the ball over, and I always want to say, there’s a difference between attack turnovers and careless turnovers. When we don’t have a number amount of careless turnovers, we’re really really good. When we have a lot of careless turnovers, it’s doesn’t allow us to set our defense and we get ran out on in transition when we’re not able to get back.
“So the attack turnovers, we got so many guys that can attack, Malik, myself, Russ, Talo, Melo as well, AD when he’s playing. So that’s gonna happen. But it’s the careless ones that hurt us, and that’s for all of us as a team. But we understand that and we did a hell of a job tonight with five turnovers, that might be a season-low for us and it resulted in a win.”
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