Kings Keep Lakers Winless During Preseason
Gary A. Vasquez-US PRESSWIRE
We’ll keep preaching the “it’s only the preseason” mantra until it is no longer the preseason. After last night’s 103-98 loss to the Sacramento Kings the Lakers have dropped all five of their preseason contests.
What made last night slightly different is that Mike Brown let his starters log a few more minutes and cut his bench rotation down to just six players.
Something else that was much different in the loss to the Kings was the sluggish defense the Lakers first team played allowing Sacramento to score 50 first half points and 81 overall by the end of the third. But that’s going to happen during the regular season so it’s only natural to get a defensive off-night during the preseason.
The good news is that the offense is starting to really take shape. Kobe Bryant continued his regular season form well ahead of the start of the 2012 season by dropping 22 on 12 shots to go along with 6 boards and 4 dimes in 28 minutes of burn.
Pau Gasol also got into the scoring act posting his best performance of the preseason with 20 on 15 shots. That’s a line resembling the previous Gasol we missed so much last season. Another man we missed all of last year even though he played every game was Metta World Peace. MWP is showing new life under the Steve Nash regime by once again scoring double figures.
Devin Ebanks continues to show improvement with a 20-point effort off the bench. He’s looking likely to steal some of Jodie Meeks’ minutes as a backup two guard. Meanwhile Antawn Jamison continues to struggle is defining his role off the bench. The jury is still very much out on that signing.
According to those that keep track of these things this is already the worst preseason in Lakers history. Whatever that means. All we’re concerned with is keeping this team healthy and hopefully getting a glimpse of Dwight Howard sooner than later. On staying healthy, we’ll just have to keep or fingers crossed as there is still another week of games to get through. On Howard playing, we could get out first fix Sunday when the Lakers and Kings rematch.