Call it a brick-out as starters’ shots fail to show up
The Lakers began Sunday’s game against the Memphis Grizzlies with a 12-foot jump shot by Stanley Johnson off a pass from Russell Westbrook.
From that point, it was all downhill for the starters except LeBron James, who was a force again with 35 points on 14-for-19 shooting and three-for-four on three-pointers.
All coach Frank Vogel could say was that he had “a number of guys having a tough night all at the same time.”
Here are three takeaways from the Lakers’ 127-119 loss to Memphis at Crypto.com Arena:
1. Too many starters suffered shooting struggles on the same night.
The starting backcourt of Westbrook and Avery Bradley was awful offensively, neither able to consistently make shots.
They were a combined four for 22 from the field, one for six from three-point range.
Westbrook was two for 12 and missed his only threepoint attempt. He did have seven rebounds and six assists.
Bradley was two for 10 and one for five from three-point range.
“A lot of our team struggled to finish, either finishing open threes on the backside or finishing quality looks at the basket,” Vogel said. “And like I said, I feel like our group let that impact our defensive focus and intensity, and that can’t happen.”
Malik Monk had been impressive in his previous few games, drilling shot after shot. But he also had an off night against the Grizzlies, shooting three for 13 for seven points.
2. Dwight Howard delivered when the crowd called.
The Lakers were wallowing and in need of a spark in the third quarter when their fans started asking for Dwight Howard to be put into the game. And so, with 4 minutes 44 seconds left in the quarter, Vogel inserted Howard with his team down 23 points.
Howard finished with seven points and four rebounds in 8:46.
3. The garbage-time guys showed fight at the finish to make the score close.
The Lakers were down 29 points in the fourth quarter when Vogel let DeAndre Jordan, Kent Bazemore, Austin Reaves, Wayne Ellington and Trevor Ariza clean up the mess.
That group went on a 21-0 run to cut the Lakers’ deficit to seven points with 1:16 left.
Clearly, that wasn’t enough, but the Lakers didn’t give up despite trailing by so much.
“I really want to credit those five guys because that’s a tough situation to be in,” Vogel said.
“You got veteran guys that are — obviously aside from Austin — veteran guys that are losing out on minutes. You sit over there for the whole game and then you gotta get out there in crunch time. I’ve seen a lot of situations where guys don’t handle that well.
“But those guys really played the right way down the stretch and they tried to make a game of it and make it interesting. It was great, competitive spirit and purity to the way that group plays. So, you definitely want to commend those guys.”
Reaves had 11 of his 16 points in the fourth quarter. Ellington had all 16 of his points in the quarter, shooting six for seven from the field and four for five from three-point range.