Lakers entering critical stretch of the season for playoff push
The Lakers were one of the NBA's hottest teams entering the AllStar break, winning six of seven games before the annual mid-February stoppage of regular-season play.
Since returning from the break, they've gone 1-1 after Thursday's road loss to the Golden State Warriors and Friday's home win over the San Antonio Spurs — a victory coach Darvin Ham critiqued after the Spurs cut the Lakers' double-digit third-quarter leads to single digits late in the third.
“It's tough to win in this league,” Ham said. “Totally grateful to come out on top of this one. But it's not just looking at whoever is right there in front of you, it's also looking at yourself and trying to see different ways you can get better and correct whatever mistakes were made the last go around, the last game, whatever, the last possession. And try to sustain the good things you're doing.”
Despite being shorthanded, the Lakers pulled
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out the victory in large because of their talent advantage over the middling Spurs and the late play from LeBron James, who finished with 30 points, nine assists and seven rebounds in his return to the lineup after missing the previous two games because of left ankle peroneal tendinopathy.
“It's a coach's thing,” Ham said. “You want your team to constantly look within and try to make plays and force the other team to put you in uncomfortable positions. Not you put yourself in those uncomfortable positions, whether it's not sprinting back in transition or allowing teams to get two or three offensive rebounds. Or fouling because we're not in position because we're not doing our work early. And then going down the other end and not trusting the execution.
“We've got a bunch of weapons, but they're useless if we don't do the little things — sprinting hard when we get the ball in transition, not turning it over, maintaining spacing, making sure we get hits on screens to create an advantage and making the simple, easy play. To put it in detail, that's what I'm talking about.”
The Lakers will have to do better with nailing those details, especially over this upcoming 10-game stretch that'll be critical for their playoff push, starting with today's road game against the Phoenix Suns.
The Lakers (31-27) have won nine of their last 13 games but haven't moved higher than ninth place in the Western Conference standings because most of the teams around them in the standings — outside of the Sacramento Kings — have been surging recently, too.
This includes the Suns (33-24), who entered Saturday eighth in the West and 2½ games ahead of the Lakers. Phoenix had won 19 of 28 games from Dec. 27 going into All-Star weekend before dropping back-toback road games to the Dallas Mavericks and Houston
Rockets after the break.
“It should be a great game,” Lakers guard Austin Reaves said. “They've been playing really good basketball for obvious reasons. They have a super-talented team that, offensively, when they're making shots, they're probably second to none. So should be a dogfight. That's what we should go in thinking it's gonna be. Go compete every possession and leave it all out on the line.
The Lakers will play eight of their next 10 games against teams either above or around them in the standings: the Suns, Clippers, Nuggets, Thunder, Kings (twice), Timberwolves and Warriors. The Warriors entered the weekend just half-game behind the Lakers for the ninth spot.
“Just try to play good basketball,” James responded when asked how the team can get its prebreak rhythm back. “I can't sit here and tell you. It's all about just putting the work in and live with the results. But most importantly, we just got to get healthy.”