The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a familiar defeat at the hands of the Sacramento Kings on Wednesday night. No Laker played particularly well, although LeBron James finished with 19 points, 13 rebounds and nine assists, and Domantas Sabonis once again could do whatever he wanted against Anthony Davis and the Lakers interior defense.
The Kings finish their season series with the Lakers by sweeping them, winning by an average margin of 10.8 points.
Like the Lakers, the Kings have spent the season jockeying for positioning in the Western Conference. Wednesday night’s win temporarily vaulted them out of the Play-In Tournament altogether and into the No. 6 seed. Even though their record and their standing doesn’t show them as one of the elite teams in the league, James certainly feels that way about them.
He spoke about what the Lakers did poorly against Sacramento before praising their northern California foes, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Offensively, we just couldn’t get it going and they did. Really good team. Really, really good team, they had our number this year, for sure.”
James then focused on what the Kings do specifically well — in part a 19-for-41 effort from 3 — that makes them so difficult to beat when they’re playing at their best.
“They do a great job of passing the ball, spreading the ball, moving bodies. When they’re knocking down 3s like they were tonight, they’re very difficult to guard.”
James broke down the kinds of plays that especially hurt against the Kings given how strong they are offensively:
“The ones when you stop an offensive team like that and then they get a second chance and they kick out, those are the ones that are kind of demoralizing, when you play great defense for 24 seconds and the ball bounces the wrong way and they get an offensive rebound and hit a 3. Those are always the ones that stay with you.”
Giving up an offensive rebound and a 3 is demoralizing against any team. But with how efficient the Kings offense is, giving them second chances can be a killer when you’ve worked hard and finally gotten a stop on the defensive end.
The Lakers likely won’t see the Kings again this season, but they certainly need to figure out how to get victories against teams that play this style, as there are a few at the top of the West.
Anthony Davis frustrated by another loss to Kings
Anthony Davis explained his frustration of losing to the Kings in a very similar fashion as the other matchups this season, all stemming from one distinctly bad quarter.
“It’s frustrating, especially the last two games. We had a terrible second quarter at our place and that was the game right there. Tonight, I think it might’ve been the third quarter where we had 17 points. So just came out of halftime and couldn’t put the ball in the basket. Had tough turnovers, especially to start the third. They got some easy looks so to be down four and I think it went to 12, something like that, pretty quickly. So we just got to come out of half ready to go. We all struggled from the field, me, LeBron and DLo, particularly me with shots around the basketball in the first half… When you’re down, you don’t want to give team like this any more extra points… When we give up extra points off of offensive rebounds and turnovers, it’s a lot tougher to beat them.”
Having being swept by the Kings in the season series, there’s nothing the Lakers can do about it now except move forward and hope to be better against other teams.
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