Los Angeles Lakers: Stop panicking, the Lakers are just fine

The Los Angeles Lakers dropping Game 3 of the NBA Finals has been a cause of concern for some fans.

The Los Angeles Lakers will not be sweeping the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals after Miami won a very important Game 3 to move the Finals to 2-1. For the Heat, this game was as must-win as it comes, as a 3-0 deficit is practically all she wrote.

Since this game was so important for the Heat, it is easy to view it as equally important for the Lakers. As we said, a 3-0 series lead is essentially the end of the series and Laker fans would have rested easy knowing that their team only had to win one of the next four to become NBA Champions.

Instead, the Heat punched the Lakers in the mouth and made this a series again. On the surface, it was a really ugly game for the Lakers. They could not avoid the turnovers, the two stars did not play well and the team lost by double-digits.

Not great.

However, panicking over this loss and taking too much out of the loss is not the right thing to do (it’ll help you sleep better if you don’t). Instead, when you really think about it, the Los Angeles Lakers are still in firm control of this series.

Why you should not panic about the Los Angeles Lakers

This game was ugly, period. The Lakers shot 43% from the field and turned the ball over 20 times. Ironically, the team had a decent-enough shooting night — by their standards — to win, shooting 33.3% from three.

The story of this game was the slow start in which the Lakers could not help but give the ball away like it was part of a K-Mart clearance sale and that set the precedent for the rest of the game. LeBron James was not great, Anthony Davis got in foul trouble and was not great and Danny Green and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope combined to shoot 1-7 from three.

Still not worried. Why?

1. The Los Angeles Lakers were one LeBron James three-ball from this game being totally different

The Los Angeles Lakers were down 105-100 with just over 90 seconds in the game. LeBron got a fairly good look from beyond the arc and just could not hit it. Jimmy Butler got fouled on the other end, made his two free throws and the game became 107-00 instead of what it could have been, 105-103.

If LeBron makes that shot then the final 90 seconds of this game are completely different. Sure, on paper it looks bad since the Lakers lost by 11, but it really was not that bad. Which leads into point number two.

2. The Lakers played this bad and still almost won

Yes, the Heat are without Bam Adebayo and Goran Dragic but the Lakers played arguably their worst game of the NBA Playoffs thus far (it happens) and they still almost won the game. How often do you think that the Heat are going to hold LeBron and AD to a combined 40 points again?

Spoiler alert: never.

Expecting the Los Angeles Lakers to sweep the NBA Finals, even against a banged-up Heat team, is setting yourself up for disappointment. My initial prediction was five games and this win for the Heat sets that up nicely.

Remember when the Lakers played an ugly Game 3 against Denver and the exact same situation was presented? Some were worried, pointing to the fact that if AD did not make his buzzer-beater that the Lakers would be down 2-1 to Denver.

What happened? The Lakers came out and thoroughly outplayed the Nuggets in Games 4 and 5 to win the series.

The Los Angeles Lakers still have the two best players in this series and even a healthy Heat team is going to struggle to stop that. Jimmy Butler, the Lakers are definitely not in trouble.