Game Grades: Los Angeles Lakers lose an ugly one against the Miami Heat

MVP: Ed Davis.  Not that anyone on this team should be MVP after such a poor all-around performance by the team, but Ed Davis had a good performance relatively speaking.  He stayed within himself and led the team with 12 points (yes, led) and grabbed nine rebounds.  Impressive numbers?  Probably not, but that’s how bad the Los Angeles Lakers were tonight.

More from Lake Show Life

LVP: Ronnie Price.  Offensively, Price went 0-4 from the field with three assists; which itself is bad, but not terrible for Price considering his role is not to score 20 (or even 10) points a game for this Los Angeles Lakers team.  However, it was his effort on the defensive end that was atrocious.  For a player that was put in the starting lineup to set the tone defensively, Price was allowing penetration almost at will to any Miami Heat guard he was “in front” of, resulting in a lot of two-on-one situations in the half court and easy buckets in the paint, which leads us to the stat of the night.

Stat of the Night:  58: that is how many points in the paint that the Miami Heat had tonight.  For a team that was averaging the second lowest amount of points in the paint in the league coming into the game (35 points in the paint per game), the Heat looked like Lob City East out there tonight.  The Heat ended the first half with 44 points, 38 of those points were scored in the paint; the other points were from the free-throw line.  The Lakers do not lack size, so there should be no reason Miami should have had that many points that close to the basket.

The Starters

The Bench

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