Los Angeles Lakers: 3 Takeaways from win over Phoenix Suns

The Los Angeles Lakers were able to pick up a much-needed win at home. Here are three takeaways from the victory.

The Los Angeles Lakers came into Staples Center with a lot on their minds. A three-game losing streak that included two blowouts to the Golden State Warriors and the Minnesota Timberwolves was bad enough, but plenty of other things were going on that wasn’t needed.

Luke Walton’s job security was brought up for the 734th time this season with reports of LeBron James’ camp “preferring a coaching change”.  

If that wasn’t enough, it looked like the Lakers would not even have enough firepower with Kyle Kuzma having to sit out with a nagging hip injury that had him stiff in the loss to the Timberwolves. With LeBron James still out and Lonzo Ball on the shelf, the Lakers needed something to go their way.

Who do the Lakers play next?…The Phoenix Suns? Okay cool.

The Lakers played a Phoenix Suns team that was also missing key players and found a way to win this game, 116-102. To be clear, the fans did not get their free tacos because the Suns scored in triple digits.

They should have gotten the free tacos anyway. The game was ugly to watch on both sides. The Suns had no business being anywhere near the Lakers after the first quarter, but the Lakers allowed them to stick around. The Lakers did not play well, but Phoenix is just hard to watch. But a win is a win.

I really felt bad for Devin Booker in this game. Sometimes it looked like he really should have broke out like “I’m David Ruffin and these are the Temptations!” 

A lot of it had to do with the gameplan of Luke Walton. Boy, is  he is really showing his coaching skills over the last two weeks. It’s almost like he gets insulted when his job security comes up and just shows genius. The dude’s attitude just changes.

The first thing he did was tactically double team Booker almost every time he touched the ball  and shadow his every move in the first half and force another Suns player to knock down a shot. Booker was harassed to the point that the first shot he scored was a wild shot going out-of-bounds crashing into photographer’s row.

The second thing he planned was to attack the basket on offense aggressively every chance that they got. DeAndre Ayton was injured so there was no rim protection early in the game. I mean none.

Dragan Bender, who was in the same draft class as Brandon Ingram and Ivica Zubac was straight up bullied down low. The Lakers had a lay-up line seemingly when he was in the game.
Let’s thank the players that made the game worth watching for 48 minutes.

Kentavious Caldwell-Pope led the Lakers in scoring with 24 points on the strength of shooting 4-for-9 from 3-point land. He added 6 rebounds and played solid defense on Devin Booker in the first half.

Sadly, all of these guys are on the trading block.

Here are three takeaways from the win.