The Lakers wrapped up their road trip with a respectable 3-3 record.
Your Los Angeles Lakers’ season just may have some life to it after all.
Following an unhappy 2-10 start, many outsiders (yours truly included) left this L.A. team comprising LeBron James, Anthony Davis, an over-the-hill Russell Westbrook, and disparate role players for dead as far as their 2022-23 season prospects were concern.
And then Anthony Davis, MVP candidate happened. Suddenly, the team was putting wins on the board, moving its way towards league-wide respectability. The team recently proved it had the goods on a 3-3 road trip, in which one could ascribe asterisks to two of the club’s three losses, Tuesday against the Cleveland Cavaliers and Wednesday against the Toronto Raptors.
The Tuesday loss featured Davis for just eight minutes in the first quarter before he left with an illness, while LeBron James joined Davis on the sidelines for the Wednesday defeat. Missing your two best players can adversely impact anybody, so let’s say a more complete L.A. is able to split those two contests.
Los Angeles head coach Darvin Ham spoke with reporters about how the Lakers managed to close out the road trip on a winning note with their 124-117 victory against the Detroit Pistons Sunday.
The Lakers led by double digits at the half, and threatened to run away with the whole affair before the Pistons, led by rumored L.A. trade target Bojan Bogdanovic, came to life in the third quarter and shrank the lead to just one point heading into the fourth. Davis and James managed to keep the team afloat and help Los Angeles close out the Pistons at Little Caesars Arena.
Controlling the game speed was a big part of the equation for L.A., as the team managed to make the Pistons play at their more measured pace.
“Just really [slowed] down a little bit [to] get the type of shots we wanted, get the ball in the hands of the people we wanted it in,” Ham said of the team’s approach. “Guys made plays. ‘Bron made plays, AD made plays — for themselves, for other teammates. We were able to close it out.”
“You talk about a tough ball club to play at the tail end of a six-game road trip. They have a lot of great young pieces over there, and those guys play hard,” Ham continued. “They got hot. Bogie caught fire in the third quarter, specifically. They got back into it and really pushed us. Just happy we were able to dig in and get organized, get timely stops when we need them.”
