The Portland Trail Blazers fell to the Los Angeles Lakers 107-95 on Friday night in their NBA In-Season Tournament matchup. The loss moves the Blazers to 1-2 in Tournament play and was their sixth-straight defeat overall. Lakers star LeBron James was electric, scoring 35 points for his sixth-straight 30-plus point performance against the Blazers.

Here are three quick takeaways from Friday's game:

Live by the 3-pointer, die by the 3-pointer

The game swung almost entirely by how the Blazers shot from behind the arc. In the first half, Portland shot only 3-16 from deep and trailed by 10 heading into halftime. In the third quarter, Portland took advantage of multiple Lakers turnovers and shot 5-12 from the 3-point line to cut the deficit to as low as one point.

Unfortunately for the Blazers, their shooting woes picked back up again in the fourth quarter. Portland shot 2-9 from beyond the arc in the final frame and the Lakers pulled away for the victory.

Offensive rebounding key to keeping it remotely close

Put simply, the Trail Blazers aren't doing much damage offensively these days. Injuries being backfilled by players on two-way contracts understandably leads to stagnant offense or less than stellar shooting.

Against the Utah Jazz on Tuesday, the Blazers shot 42 percent. That was followed up by a listless performance against the Cleveland Cavaliers where Portland only shot 37 percent as a team. Against the Lakers tonight, Portland was again sub-par from the floor, shooting 40 percent.

But the Blazers kept the game relatively close by way of dominating the offensive glass. Portland pulled down 19 offensive rebounds, leading to 22 second-chance points. In a game where the Lakers were able to force the issue with their defense and get out in transition, stellar offensive rebounding nights from DeAndre Ayton (7) and Skyler Mays (3) helped the Blazers hang close through most of the night.

Shaedon Sharpe almost had a terrible triple-double

Second-year guard Shaedon Sharpe is having a breakout season so far, adding nine points per game to his scoring average and leading the NBA in minutes per game. But tired legs look like they may have set in this week. Wednesday, Sharpe struggled mightily against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Friday, Sharpe was more effective – finishing with 17 points and nine rebounds – but also with 10 turnovers.

Said Blazers head coach Chauncy Billups after the game, “I've been there. I can remember, as a rookie, having nine turnovers at the Garden. I remember it. So, for me, it's one of those tough things when you're developing. Sometimes it's painful, but then you've got to learn from it. That's the beauty of it, or if you don't learn from it and keep doing it – that's when it gets really tough.”

Billups then pointed to injuries necessitating Sharpe playing outside of his comfort-zone:

“This is a part of it. We ask him to do so much. Bring it up, make the play, shoot on the kickouts, get to the basket. I mean, I'm asking too much of him right now. And he's not a natural playmaker yet. We're asking him to do that too.”

But ultimately Billups does expect better. The Lakers feature long defenders that are adept at swarming the ball, and it's important to Billups to let some turnovers go while coaching up others:

“We're gonna watch it, we'll talk about it. There are some that I'll excuse, and there were some that were lackadaisical that I just can't accept. And he knows that, so we'll talk about it.”

The Blazers take on the Oklahoma City Thunder on Sunday night.