The Los Angeles Lakers’ win over the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday night was their second consecutive victory as the team looks to be finding its stride. LeBron James had an efficient night offensively with 20 points, eight rebounds and six assists, but also struggled to take care of the ball with a game-high eight turnovers.
Regardless, the outcome was what the Lakers needed as the regular season winds down. The team finds themselves in the ninth spot in the West, 1.5 games ahead of the Golden State Warriors. However they are three games behind the Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks and Sacramento Kings with only 12 games remaining.
Ideally, the Lakers would be able to improve their seeding as currently, they would have to win two straight games in the Play-In Tournament just to make the playoffs. But LeBron insists the Lakers aren’t worried about seeding, only on their own performance.
“At the end of the day, we’re not really focused on seeding,” LeBron said. “We’re just focused on what we can control; we can’t control the seedings if other teams were playing well too still. What you can control is go out and play, try to win as many games as you can and see where you land.”
Unfortunately for the Lakers, they will need some serious help from one of the teams above them to move up the standings and they just haven’t been getting it. But that can’t discourage the Lakers from staying locked in and winning as many games as they can.
Either way, LeBron and the Lakers know they have no room for error and the superstar was happy they were able to get a big home win over the 76ers.
“We just know what is at stake,” LeBron added. “Obviously, we’ve been saying it for a while, but we don’t have any room for error now. It used to be we don’t have much room for error. And now we don’t have any room for error.
“We just had the right to ship and obviously starting out the half with multiple turnovers is not good. But AR was able to hit a couple of 3s to keep us in the game or not let the ship go too far away. And we was able to lock in.”
The Lakers really buckled down in the fourth quarter to get that win, but the work is far from over. The team will need to keep that focus in this final stretch and with a little help, the Lakers can still improve their standing in the extremely tough Western Conference.
LeBron James says Lakers ‘got the job done’ in ugly win
The Lakers shot below 44% and turned the ball over 21 times against the 76ers, so needless to say it was not a pretty game. But in the end, the Lakers got the win and that’s all that matters to LeBron James.
“Ugly. But we got the job done,” James said. “Obviously, the three-day rest. You got guys that didn’t have their legs, and the rhythm was off. Obviously, our turnovers were a lot more than we are accustomed over the last few weeks. But we got the job done.
“We defended like a mug in the second half, gave up only 18 in the third and 24 in the fourth, or vice versa actually. So that’s big time. When your offense is struggling like it was, we had a lot of chippys that we missed, a lot of open looks that we missed. But when you can lock in on defense and get a win like that, that’s very important.”
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