I am eating crow this morning and it does not taste good. I had thought that the Lakers would destroy the Portland Trail Blazers last night and boy was I wrong. It really was a slugfest though but the Trail Blazers showed grit and acted like a Championship team who had a flurry of points and outscored the Lakers in the fourth quarter by nine points, 31 – 22. Those nine points were huge and cost the Lakers, who ended up losing by eight, the game.
Once again the Lakers were out rebounded 45 -41. This is partly due to the fact that the Lakers have a seven foot tall shooting guard in Anthony Davis. Davis on offense is always outside of the paint and it is hard to get rebounds when you are twenty feet away from the basket. However, the Lakers have proven to be able to win without rebounding. The real reason that the Lakers lost last night because they were not passing the ball well.
The Lakers only had 20 assists compared to the Blazers who had 29.
Give credit to Blazers, they played solid team defense, and the Lakers were unable to match them last night. The Blazers had nine steals to the Lakers six, something more shocking however, the Blazers had more blocks than the Lakers with six. I hate to say it but the Lakers got man handled last night. It is hard to win when you get outrebounded, turn the ball over more, have less assists, and the other team has more steals and blocks.
I really hate to say this, but the Lakers might miss Dwight Howard. Anthony Davis got shutdown, he played 38 minutes, basically the entire game and only had 13 points. Marc Gasol played nineteen minutes and only had four points. Kyle Kuzma, who throughout his young career has been very inconsistent, led the Lakers in scoring the night before but last night he played 23 minutes and only had six points. Come on Kyle! Kuzma has to play consistently better this season for the Lakers to repeat, I know it is early in the season to be talking about a repeat, but that is what every citizen of Laker Nation expects. If you take LeBron off of this Lakers team, do they even make the playoffs? Probably not.
They would be the West Coast Pelicans.
