Los Angeles Lakers start a tougher schedule against Dallas Mavericks, 3 Lessons

The Los Angeles Lakers were living fat and happy after their Thanksgiving feast on the Washington Wizards on Friday night. Things changed Sunday as the Lakers lost to the Dallas Mavericks. Lake Show Life breaks down the game with Lake Show Life lessons!

Well, it seems that the other shoe finally dropped for the Los Angeles Lakers. The team was playing with fire throughout the road trip with their uneven play despite sweeping all four games.

With the slippage of transition defense and rebounding totals, a game like this was bound to happen at some point. Luka Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks probably thought the first matchup with the Lakers was a combination of luck and just plain giving the game away.

Either way, the Mavs staked a major claim to that theory after they snapped the Lakers’ 10-game winning streak, winning 114-100. After a strong surge of offense, in the beginning, the Mavericks stayed close despite little contributions from Luka Doncic on the offensive end.

A shout out goes to LeBron James. He knew the Los Angeles Lakers were in trouble at halftime. Before the team went into the locker room, LeBron James tore into a specific player on the floor about dogging it out on the floor.

The specific vote coming from the writer of this post-game report is Rajon Rondo. His play that has drawn criticism from Lake Show Life is starting to surface for all to see.

Let’s break down and clean up LeBron’s comments, shall we? Two of three things could have happened to set the “King” off at this point in time. One reason after halftime probably had his eyes really rolling!

• If Lakers fans have been paying attention to any of the games Rondo has played this season, they would know that Rajon hasn’t run a full sprint (Outside of getting the ball from any teammate that got a defensive rebound!) all season long. 
• He personally cost the Lakers 5 points in the 3rd quarter with bad defense, blowing an easy layup that led to a Doncic 3-point shot. The film does not lie Laker fans! Enjoy!
• Just before this impromptu team meeting, Rajon Rondo burned almost 8 seconds off the clock looking for the spectacular alley-oop play instead of making the simple play.  

Then “LeBronstadamus” turned out to be right because in the second half, the bottom fell out and the game was basically over. After coming out of the locker room with a 62-59 lead, the Lakers’ chances evaporated with a 22-5 run to start the third quarter.

At one point, the Lakers had more technical fouls in the quarter (2) than field goals (1). The second technical foul by Kentavious Caldwell-Pope sparked a 10-0 Lakers run (He sat down immediately afterward and Alex Caruso replaced him!), but Luka Doncic shut that down with the quickness. He almost matched the Lakers 17 points in the quarter with 16.  In other news, that quarter stands as the Lakers’ lowest point total in any quarter this season.

Avery Bradley would be the steal of free agency if Dwight Howard wasn’t playing so well (His contract is non-guaranteed!). Bradley was really starting to get his game together as a 2-way player before he got hurt. Since his injury, opponents have had a ball shooting from the 3-point line. The Dallas Mavericks shot 17-of-49 from distance. The Lakers? 7-of-27.

This is simple arithmetic here. The Lakers, with their front line, can destroy any team in the NBA. But they all have to be playing well. Dunks count as two points. With opponents outscoring the Lakers by 30 points from distance like in this game, the advantage is lost.

The shooters have been inconsistent all year-long. To put this in perspective, Caldwell-Pope has been the best 3-point shooter over the past few games. Over the road trip, teams were scoring from distance at a rapid rate. Dallas just continued the trend.

In games like this one, if the Lakers aren’t playing locking down defense or dominating down low, the team is vulnerable to bad defeats like this. It won’t take long to see if that is the case.

The Lakers jump back on the road for the next three games, with a Tuesday matchup against the Denver Nuggets. Let’s get to a more meaningful Lake Show Life Lessons than in the past few games.