Los Angeles Lakers: LeBron, Avery Bradley, AD eclipse Suns, 3 lessons
By Ronald Agers
Lake Show Life breaks down the game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Phoenix Suns with Lake Show Life Lessons. First, the Lakers’ eclipse of the Suns and how they almost got sunburned.
The Los Angeles Lakers are undefeated in 2020. If the roster continues to play defense as they did against the Phoenix Suns they’ll stay that way. If they fall asleep in the second half, MAN! They will be in trouble.
Lake Show Life has put out the post-game series, Lake Show Life Lessons, for over a year now to pretty good success. There’s one important lesson that the Staples Center crowd and this writer learned against the Phoenix Suns.
The game is not over until the final buzzer sounds. To all the readers looking at this, tell the truth, you thought it was over didn’t you? Don’t feel guilty, everyone did except for one guy. He’s the Phoenix Suns announcer, Eddie Johnson. He never gave up. He believed.
He had seen this scenario before. He told a story when he played with the Kansas City Kings, how the Lakers ran out to a 40-4 lead in the first quarter. He talked about how the Suns needed to show pride. In the beginning, nobody would have paid attention to him.
The Los Angeles Lakers in the first half looked like they went to bed at 8:00 to get ready for this game. They came out on automatic knocking down their first 11 shots looking to end the Phoenix Suns’ chances early. The Lakers scored a season-high 43 points while bullying the Suns, holding them to just 17 points. Los Angeles topped their dominance to an astounding 36 point lead.
The Lakers faithful started thinking about leaving Staples for the New Year’s after-parties and the post-game reporter thought about bed. In the second half, the Lakers thought about both options.
The Suns came out in the second half and ran the Lakers off the floor. On the strength of 38 points in the 3rd quarter, what was once a 36-point lead evaporated to seven points with the game in the balance.
The fact that Tyler Johnson can’t shoot in an empty gym from 3-point range and Devin Booker‘s stupid decisions late allowed the Lakers to hold on to win 117-107.
Breaking news from Lake Show Life! The bench really stunk up the joint and allowed Phoenix back in the game.
LeBron James and Anthony Davis should have been icing their knees and passing out their shoes to the fans at this point. This was the time for the bench players to get on the floor and show what they are made of.
Outside of Kyle Kuzma, who scored 19 points on a bad shooting night (5-of-15 FG and 3-of-10 from distance!), there were little contributions scoring from the bench. When the rest of the starters were forced to come back, the rhythm was off and if not for LeBron James closing out the game, this would have been easily one of the biggest collapses in the NBA season.
To all the Lakers fans upset over James handling the ball all of the time, this game showed why you need to get over it. The Lakers need a playmaker, period. According to ESPN’s resident insider genius Adrian Wojonarowski, Darren Collison is considering a comeback with his sights on the Clippers and Lakers. After this game, the man can’t get here soon enough.
Lake Show Life Lessons shows how highlights can mislead what really goes down in an NBA game.