Los Angeles Lakers: 4 lessons from win over LA Clippers

Anthony Davis was dominant for the Los Angeles Lakers against the LA Clippers when needed and LeBron James is closing the MVP race based on public opinion. Lake Show Life Lessons goes to the next level along with LeBron’s play.

The Los Angeles Lakers are good. Real good. After beating a Milwaukee Bucks team that dominated them early this season, the Lakers beat the LA Clippers in front of a nationally televised audience.

To all Lake Show Life regulars and people clicking on this series for the first time. The debates and discussions about the Los Angeles Lakers will be entertainment for the rest of the season.

Throughout this campaign, the narrative has been that the Lake Show is a good team. They are the number one team in the Western Conference and have two of the top 5 players in the NBA.

But so what, the Los Angeles Lakers can’t win against good teams! Up until last Thursday night, fans could pull that argument out and actually shut Lakers Nation up. It’s not like history wasn’t telling the story better than they could say it.

Before this week, the Los Angeles Lakers were 0-4 against the Philadelphia 76ers, Milwaukee Bucks and the Clippers. Plus they were beaten quite handily. In less than one week, the Lake Show told everyone to shut up.

• On Tuesday, they beat the Philadelphia 76ers. Anthony Davis led a virtual assault with 18 points in the second quarter that sparked a 42-10 run to end Philly’s chances.
• On Friday, they accepted the physical challenge on both ends of the floor and beat the Milwaukee Bucks to get a season split. The MVP argument was a complete joke before this game. Then LeBron James outplayed Giannis Antetokounmpo.
• On Sunday, the Los Angeles Clippers got knocked down a few steps after dominating on opening night and on Christmas Day.

On Monday afternoon, I will paraphrase a quote from the late, great Dr. Jerry Buss when the Lakers beat the Boston Celtics in the 1985 NBA Finals.

We can all eliminate this sentence from the English language:

Sure, the Los Angeles Lakers have the best record in the West, but they haven’t beat the Clippers yet! 

Lake Show Life was adamant that this team had to sweep the Bucks and Clippers this weekend to be taken seriously going into the postseason. There were back and forth discussions in the comment section on both sides if that was really the truth. LeBron James is not stupid. He knew and he showed that they had to prove it with his emotion in the 4th quarter.

This writer is sold. The Los Angeles Lakers are for real and, to be honest, anyone that believes that these last two games were a fluke really isn’t trying to analyze basketball. No one who takes pride in providing serious analysis will be saying that anymore.

The Lakers showed the NBA that they will be taking the long road in the postseason winning a virtual dogfight over the LA Clippers on Sunday 112-103. To anyone that believes the Lakers are a pretty team that doesn’t have that physical toughness can walk out the door on the left too.

Was this a pretty game? No. Did the Clippers get run out of the Staples Center? Nope. At times, it looked like the Lakers were going to wilt while Rondo continues to make this writer look like a genius.

But the game of basketball is not played that way. Some games teams have to get punched in the mouth to see how they will respond. On opening night, Stephen A. Smith challenged LeBron James after coming up small on opening night.

His stance did not change throughout this season. Well, it will be interesting to see what he says on Monday because it was obvious that LeBron James does pay attention to the chatter from ESPN and Lake Show Life (Hopefully!) that have watched him come up small against some superstars that have challenged him over the last few seasons.

This one has to be sweet though. It was clear the Clippers were enjoying life with a 2-0 season series edge.

• They were needling the Lakers with marketing billboards all over their city.
• Patrick Beverly had a ball trash talking after their win on Christmas. When LeBron lost the ball out-of-bounds in crunch time? That was the cherry on top.
• Social media can be a brutal place at times. Let’s just say some Lakers fans were allowing the chatter to show how worried they were. The childish jokes on everything Clippers showed how worried they were.

The game as a whole was decided on the defensive end because numerous players down the bench were engaged defensively. The defensive schemes that wore out the Bucks on Friday night were even better on Sunday, holding the Clippers to 38.8 percent shooting. The defense drew numerous offensive foul calls and was close on many others.

All four superstars showed in this game for both teams, but the Lakers bench outplayed the Clippers.

Kyle Kuzma was great on defense and providing second-chance opportunities. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope showed up in yet another big game, knocking down shots when needed to end the night with nine points. He ended drawing a key foul on Paul George late in the game to hold the Clippers at bay.

Watching the Morris brothers play, Lake Show Life noticed something. For now, the Lakers won out on which Morris brother the team ended up getting. Marcus Morris can’t shoot. Another reason why this site doesn’t base analysis off of stats alone. Sure, Marcus was going to get numbers with Knicks because he has the green light. But he has been awful shooting the ball since the trade.

The win moves the Lakers’ record to 49-13. With Giannis possibly being out for a week with a slight knee sprain, the No. 1 seed overall is not out of the picture. They continue their homestand when they host the Brooklyn Nets at Staples Center on Tuesday.

This could be a possible trap game with Kenny Atkinson being fired over the weekend.

Let’s get to a wild and crazy Lake Show Life Lessons.