Los Angeles Lakers: Kyle Kuzma shines in a foul plagued win! 4 Lessons!
By Ronald Agers
The Los Angeles Lakers won their scrimmage over the Orlando Magic on Saturday.
The Los Angeles Lakers won their very first scrimmage game over the Orlando Magic in an early Saturday matinee. Kyle Kuzma demonstrates why Lakers Nation are so divided over his future bouncing back from a bad game on Thursday. Lake Show Life breaks down a very strange game from both teams.
Okay folks, if these two scrimmage games are what Lakers Nation will get from the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s going to be a long and frustrating ride. After an encouraging loss to the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday when LeBron James and Anthony Davis set the tone and focus, one poke in the eye that sidelined AD took the wind out of the sails of the Lakers going forward in this one.
After reading the last sentence, you would swear the Los Angeles Lakers lost their second scrimmage game. Nope, the Los Angeles Lakers led by Kyle Kuzma’s 25 points came out with a win over a scrappy Orlando Magic team. Should Frank Vogel be happy? Uh, no.
In total honesty, the Lakers should have won this game by 100 points. The Orlando Magic outside of Terence Ross and D.J. Augustin couldn’t shoot at all.
The biggest good news/bad news to report in this meaningless game was not that the Lakers basically fell asleep at the wheel and blew a 19 point lead and was behind in the 4th quarter 93-92. The news of the day will be Anthony Davis leaving the scrimmage after being poked in the eye by Michael Carter-Williams and did not return.
https://twitter.com/ESPNNBA/status/1287065961422565381
The good news:
Anthony Davis was destroying the Orlando Magic big men. Nikola Vucevic looked scared to death and Aaron Gordon was a non-factor with AD on the floor. In the 9 minutes Davis was on the floor, he messed around and almost had a double-double with 9 points and 10 rebounds. In the two scrimmage games, Anthony Davis is the best player on the Los Angeles Lakers. That’s it, let’s move on.
The bad news:
Even though the injury was minor (Easy for Lake Show Life to say!), it shows that Davis has to be healthy for any chance for the Los Angeles Lakers to make a title run.
The defense right now is suspect even when he is on the floor (More on that later!) but when he is not playing, this is an above average playoff team. The Magic had a ton of offensive rebounds, there were a lot of needless fouling and the roster was exposed some.
Some Lakers’ followers will say that the Lakers’ defense was great and locked Orlando’s offense up. Lake Show Life sees this differently. Even though the Magic were ice cold throughout the entire first half, it is clear that Orlando depends on ball movements and discipline. Why? As a team, they can’t shoot.
Midway through the second quarter, the Magic were shooting 7/41 from the field and finished at 22% at halftime. At this point, the Lakers had their biggest lead at 53-34 with four minutes left. At the half, the Lakers led 60-47. The defense wasn’t good based on these facts.
- The Orlando Magic had three shots from distance literally go halfway down and came out.
- The Lakers turned the ball over that lead to easy baskets.
- The worst? The Orlando Magic went to the free-throw line 27 times knocking down 23.
Look, it’s not easy to get up and play a noon matinee game under any circumstances. With the Lakers being a West Coast team, body clocks are an issue. Plus with Frank Vogel trying to implement more zone defense didn’t help either. But if it wasn’t for Kyle Kuzma, who is the poster child for maddening inconsistency, the Lakers would still be without a win.
Let’s start with him.