The Los Angeles Lakers got off to a decent start in the NBA restart, but they were fairly unimpressive against a shorthanded Los Angeles Clippers team that was missing 37 points of offense from its bench with Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell out of the bubble. That trend continued on Wednesday when the purple and gold struggled to keep pace with a motivated Oklahoma City Thunder team that never allowed the Lakers to lead throughout the entirety of the game.
The 86 points the Lakers mustered in a 19-point loss to the Thunder was the worst scoring output of their 2019-20 NBA season and the second double-digit loss in four games inside the bubble.
The dependence on LeBron James and Anthony Davis having big nights has become awfully apparent by now. They barely survived the Clippers to win by two points and fell to the defending champion Toronto Raptors by 15 points the next game as James and Davis combined for a mere 34 points.
Topping the Utah Jazz took a monster night from Davis with 42 points and a combined 64 points of offense when throwing in James' contributions, which accounted for more than half of the offense.
So, the loss to the Thunder is not a surprise but rather a confirmation of the Lakers' woes offensively. James and Davis combined to shoot 33% from the floor, their lowest combined field goal percentage in a game as teammates, according to ESPN Stats & Info. Their previous low was 37% on July 30 against the Clippers — meaning their two lowest marks have come during the bubble.
The Lakers, who clinched the top spot in the West earlier this week, are the only team averaging under 100 points per game since the restart (99.3).
The team seems to have pulled the foot off the accelerator, and while that might be customary for a franchise that has just clinched the top record in its conference, there simply isn't enough time in between to ramp it back up again.
The Lakers could be facing a motivated and bolstered Portland Trail Blazers team in the first round — that would not be the usual cakewalk most No. 1 seeds are used to. The Blazers are only one game behind the struggling young Memphis Grizzlies, and they might very well leapfrog them for the eighth spot in the West when it's all said and done.
Frank Vogel and company might be trying to save legs until the real games begin, but that could prove to be a rather dumb strategy with only four ramp-up games left before the chips are on the table.
The Lakers' bench looks putrid at the moment, with JR Smith yet to hit a 3-pointer in four games and only making one of his eight attempts from the floor. Dion Waiters has been a welcome addition, but he's still the inefficient scorer with tunnel vision that we've come to know in the past few years. Kyle Kuzma has been okay but nothing special.
Danny Green is struggling to find his shot, as is Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard aren't providing the same type of interior contributions they had earlier in the season.
In short, the Lakers have become too reliant on LeBron James and Anthony Davis' heroics to win games. That's a strategy that could quickly be picked apart in the playoffs, where coaching, physical play, and attention to detail play a major part.
Los Angeles would be smart to use the remaining games to get the role players and newcomers in a groove before they fall victim to their own predictability.
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