Los Angeles Lakers: 4 lessons in ugly loss to San Antonio Spurs

To AD’s credit, he did call himself out before calling out the entire Los Angeles Lakers defense!

A week ago, Anthony Davis did call his play basically the same as the team’s in this game. But his frustrations boiled over to the point that he kicked over a drink cart. Considering that there are no fans in the arena, it’s a pretty good guess that it was heard by everyone anywhere near the gym.

If you looked at the box score, it seems that AD did just fine. He scored 23 points (11-17 shooting!), grabbed 10 rebounds (2 offensive!), had 3 assists, 3 blocks and a steal. This is the third game in a row that Davis has collected 3 blocked shots.

But in this game, LaMarcus Aldridge scored 28 points. Then while he was giving the Lakers buckets, all of the other Spurs starters not named Keldon Johnson got loose and Rudy Gay off the bench.

But let’s be clear here, AD got the Lakers untracked offensively. The team didn’t score its first points until four minutes into the game. He exploded for 8 quick points to cut into the Spurs’ huge lead early.

But one of the subliminal problems with this team is as soon as AD makes plays like this.

The offense does not stay with him enough. Aldridge could have easily gotten foul trouble if the Lakers would have kept feeding Davis down low. AD only had two free throws in the game. Remember this is a guy that went to the line 27 TIMES last year against Memphis. Sure LeBron took up the scoring slack in the middle quarters, but can’t both stars contribute at the same time?

There were two Lakers players on the bench that were contributing at the same time. It would be nice if one of these players was in the starting lineup by next week.