Los Angeles Lakers lose two streaks vs. Indiana Pacers, 4 lessons

Lake Show Life breaks down a wild Los Angeles Lakers game against the Indiana Pacers in Lake Show Life Lessons!

The Los Angeles Lakers rolled into Indianapolis riding a 14-game road winning streak and 7 -game winning streak overall. No Anthony Davis, no Kyle Kuzma and the Pacers executing down the stretch led to the first loss outside of the state of California this season.

If you have been following Lake Show Life post-game reports (If you haven’t, you need to start!), you knew this loss was coming based on the Atlanta Hawks game on Sunday. Poor execution missed free throws and horrific 3-point shooting was bailed out by Anthony Davis and a LeBron James “Hall of Fame” exhibition. Even then, Atlanta had a chance at the end.

This time, Davis was not around and the Lakers’ bad habits from the previous game still were. With AD and Kyle Kuzma out for this game, it would have been easy for the Lakers to be caught looking ahead to the showdown against Milwaukee on Thursday night.

To their credit, they realized something that many fans didn’t. The Indiana Pacers are a really good playoff-contending team. After starting the season 0-3, they came into the game-winning 18 of their last 24 contests.

Throw in the fact that their star, Victor Oladipo, is still out until next month with last year’s knee injury, it shows that the Pacers have just as complete a team as the Los Angeles Lakers.

In one of the more exciting games of the NBA season, the Lakers FINALLY lost outside of the state of California, losing to the Indiana Pacers 105-102.

Even though they lost, a 14-game winning streak taking the best shots from NBA teams across the country is a major achievement. When a streak can be in the sentence of the 1971-72 team that still holds the record for consecutive wins (33), this is history folks.

Let’s address the elephant in the room immediately. Rajon Rondo is not the reason why the Los Angeles Lakers lost this game. Should he have passed the ball to LeBron James? Maybe. But the fact still remains that he almost hit the shot.

But the internet and social media are undefeated. Rajon Rondo will be the butt of many jokes, not to mention the famous Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode when Carlton took the ball from Will Smith and shot it himself.

Okay, everyone, stop laughing. But seriously, four straight missed free throws by LeBron James and Dwight Howard hurt the Lakers a lot worse. After those miscues, the Indiana Pacers followed the lead of Malcolm Brogdon and Domantas Sabonis to a 10-2 run to finish out the game.

The Lakers are still sitting at the top of the NBA world with the Milwaukee Bucks (Who lost to the Dallas Mavericks the night before) at 24-4. But this loss here probably shows more about the Lakers than the 14-game winning streak.

With AD out, the Lakers needed all hands on deck to pick up the slack. That came from the bench as they absolutely exploded with 53 points led by Howard. The team needed Frank Vogel to do some heavy remixes with his rotations. After Lake Show Life criticized him for not making adjustments for the bad shooting, he was extremely creative to keep things close.

After halftime, when the Lakers were up two, the game was all about runs in the second half. The Pacers exploded with a 14-0 run in the third quarter while adjusting their defense to make LeBron more uncomfortable. The Lakers countered with an 11-0 run of their own capped off with an Alex Caruso 3-pointer from the left corner to give the Lakers a 95-91 lead.

Bottom line, the Lakers have to be a better free-throw shooting team. They are ranked 27th in the NBA from the charity stripe. If it wasn’t for Anthony Davis tearing it up at nearly 90%, the Lake Show could easily be last.

Let’s get to Lake Show Life Lessons. After you read this you will laugh at the catastrophe theories some Lakers fans will use to convince the sky is falling.