Anthony Davis studied the final box score, his single brow furrowed.
There wasn’t a lot to like about the 141-137 loss to the Sacramento Kings, which took three overtimes of struggle to decide. Davis himself has had better nights, going 9 for 22 from the field. But he allowed himself, for a moment, to imagine a brighter future for a Lakers team that has underwhelmed to a 10-11 record.
“We gotta keep fighting,” he said. “You know, 10-11, I mean, we could go on a 10-game winning streak, 12-game winning streak, now the narrative is different. You know, 10-game winning streak, we’re 20-11. Now we’ll shut everybody up.”
For now, that prediction is fanciful – nothing the Lakers have done so far suggests a 10-game winning streak is imminent. And within the 63 minutes of basketball Friday night are embedded several key figures which underscore what is ailing the Lakers lately:
13 of 14 shots
In the first two overtimes, the Lakers decided to lean on their stars as many teams do. Between LeBron James, Davis and Russell Westbrook, the Big Three accounted for 13 of the team’s 14 attempts from the field in the first two extra periods. They made eight of them, and also got nine attempts at the freer-throw line thanks to the stars getting fouled.
Here’s the part that’s hard to understand: If the Lakers kept Carmelo Anthony and Malik Monk on the floor because they could shoot, and James and Davis were struggling with their jump shots all night, why didn’t Anthony and Monk get more looks?
This starts with the understanding that Anthony and Monk are defensive liabilities who have been targeted throughout the season. Teams are eager to switch onto those players and attack them, and the Kings were no different. NBA tracking data suggests that 27 field-goal attempts (13 made) were taken against Melo and Monk, which doesn’t account for the drives that caused defensive breakdowns that led to the Kings scoring against other players.
Monk was especially hot through regulation, going 8 for 10 from the floor when he hit a tying 3-pointer with 1:37 left. Anthony was 4 for 9, but he’s going to get opportunities because he’s one of the best scorers of all time. But if those two players combined for just one shot in the first two overtimes, why are they trusted to defend? Are they simply on the floor to provide space for James and Westbrook to operate?
It’s hard to fully drop the accountability for this on any one party. Coach Frank Vogel sets the rotations, so it was his call to keep Monk and Anthony on the floor. But it’s also on James and Westbrook to get them involved. Monk’s first and only shot of any of the overtimes came in the third, when he had a look from the corner but hadn’t touched the ball in so long, he shot it well above the rim, his feel all but gone. Anthony ended up with four shots in the OT periods, but three of them were in the third when it was clear James’ legs were giving out on his shots.
“We did a good job letting Bron orchestrate for a lot of the action,” Vogel said. “And when it seemed like he was getting gassed, we diversified by looking at Melo and A.D. and Russ in the pick-and-roll to just try to diversify. I thought we were pretty good on that side of the ball. Just didn’t get enough stops.”
The Lakers might have gotten more stops with a more defensive-focused lineup if the plan was to let the Big Three shoot. But when they could have won in regulation or the first overtime, they rolled with shooters rather than stoppers.
2 for 18 from 3-point range
The most basic thing the Lakers could have done to escape with a win – not one that would have felt good, but at least a W – would have been to hit key shots. But memorably, James missed 3-pointers at the end of regulation and the first overtime that would have sealed it. The magic he had shown in Indiana was used up after the five-game road trip.
When you combine James’ night (2 for 13) and Davis’ night (0 for 5) from behind the arc, it illustrates how short those two were against the Kings on jump shots, of which Davis admitted they had taken too many.
There are two different issues here: For James, who entered the night as roughly a 37% 3-point shooter, the problem was his legs. He was consistently short on his jumper, and his last seven attempts from 3-point range were all off-target. He admitted that the issues were of execution, not getting bad looks.
“I thought the looks that I got, I wasn’t pressured. Wasn’t sped up. Got great looks,” he said. “The looks that I got (Friday night) were actually better looks than the ones that I got in Indy. I just made them. The step back I had on Sabonis, he was literally inside my jersey. I just made it.”
James might deserve the benefit of the doubt on that, even if he probably should have distributed more in the overtime periods when it was clear his 3-pointers weren’t going in. The bigger problem is Davis, who hasn’t been hitting 3-pointers all year.
Davis is just 7 for 42 (16.7%) from 3-point range. The Lakers have continued to run pick-and-pop plays for him that he routinely can’t cash. It’s a far cry from the sniper he was during the 2020 championship run. Stat site Cleaning the Glass puts his 3-point percentage in the 2nd percentile among all bigs in the NBA, and yet the Lakers have remained optimistic.
“We’re encouraging him to shoot open ones, knowing that it’s gonna come around,” Vogel said. “It just hasn’t yet. It’s just part of our early-season struggles. He starts knocking that down the way he’s done the last few years, it’s gonna open up a lot of things for our team.”
The bottom line is starting to get in the Lakers’ way. They can’t lose more games hoping Davis’ season-long shooting will suddenly turn around. Expect the Lakers to start planning for the shooting that he’s showing now rather than waiting for the shooting that he could showcase later.
16 offensive rebounds
The Kings killed the Lakers on the offensive boards, something that has been trending the wrong way for weeks now. Sacramento had 16 offensive rebounds for 23 second-chance points, which killed the Lakers. And some of those plays stuck with Davis.
“We gotta be able to (keep them to) one shot,” he said. “I think it was three times where we got a stop and they got an offensive rebound and they scored on all of them.”
There’s a lot of data now: The Lakers have played 1,028 non-garbage time possessions with Davis at center, roughly half of their total possessions. Those lineups are allowing opponents to grab offensive rebounds 28.1% of the time, which ranks in the 20th percentile among all NBA lineups per Cleaning the Glass. The Lakers’ season-long defensive rebounding percentage is 71.6%, which is 25th in the NBA. Opponents are scoring 14.6 second-chance points per game, which is 26th in the NBA.
The summary of all that data: The Lakers are getting killed on the defensive glass, and killed even worse when they play small – which in the two years before this was an unbeatable lineup for them. This is a key reason why all lineups with Davis at center are getting outscored by 4.2 points per 100 possessions, and why the Lakers have just a 112.9 defensive rating in half-court defense: They keep giving their opponent second chances.
There’s not a clear-cut solution to this problem: With DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard in at center, the Lakers are still allowing offensive rebounds on 27.3% of opportunities, which is not good, either. So simply switching back to a bigger lineup isn’t cutting off the flow. And when the problem is that profound, the Lakers might require more soul-searching on either effort, or even the construction of the roster.
The players who are supposed to help them in that area are not so far. And maybe nothing sums up their 10-11 start like that sentiment. And short of a 10-game winning streak out of nowhere, that’s not likely to go away anytime soon.
