Los Angeles Lakers: 4 Lessons from last-second loss to Sacramento Kings

The Los Angeles Lakers hoped to finish the first half of the season with an easy win against the Sacramento Kings. The Lakers blew an early lead and ended up losing to the worst defensive team in the history (Yes it’s true!) of the NBA.

Lake Show Life breaks down what else happened in Lake Show Life Lessons! The only Los Angeles Lakers extended post-game report with in-depth analysis and highlights. 

The Los Angeles Lakers have finally made it to the All-Star break which is almost equivalent to Spring Break to NBA writers doing West Coast post-game write-ups. Eight days of deep sleep. But before Lake Show Life Lessons goes on hiatus, we must inform Lakers Nation of something.

The Los Angeles Lakers LOST to the Sacramento Kings.  

Sure, there will be excuses that there were three missing starters in the Lakers lineup. Okay let’s kill that narrative early shall we? Let’s go back to March 1st shall we?

The Kings had the Hornets dead to rights and had a late-game collapse of epic proportions to lose 127-126.  Let’s set up the scenario.

• Sacramento was up 123-115 with 50 seconds left (1.6% win probability for Charlotte!).
• They missed 6 of their last 7 free throws to end the game.
• Oh, by the way, the Hornets beat them with three starters out of the lineup. Now fast forward to Wednesday night.

The Los Angeles Lakers are officially done with half of the regular-season suffering a bad 123-120 loss to a team that had lost ten of eleven games. There were rumors that this could have been Luke Walton’s last game if the Lakers had blown the Kings out without LeBron James.

Now the Los Angeles Lakers have this situation waiting for them after the All-Star break.

• They are now in third place in the Pacific Division. 
• At 24-13, the Lakers are now in the 4th seed in the Western Conference, behind the L.A. Clippers, Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz. 
• The San Antonio Spurs are three games behind the Lakers as the 5th seed.

The Lakers could really use the time off with so many players in and out of the lineup, Netflix could do a reboot of M.A.S.H. and it would be a ratings hit. In addition to LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Marc Gasol out for the game, Alex Caruso was an added scratch for neck spasms from the previous game.

While there will be excuses that the Lakers nearly beat the Kings under these conditions.

• Playing with starting center on a 10-day contract.
• Playing Jared Dudley and Wesley Matthews double-figure minutes and getting nothing in the scoring column.
• Then there’s the Buddy Hield 3 point incident that was never reviewed.

The real reason the Lakers got beat was because they couldn’t stop Sacramento on defense. The Kings shot 60 percent from the floor for the game. That and Buddy Hield played for an hour real-time without missing a shot scoring 29 points.

https://twitter.com/ESPNNBA/status/1367348093931327489

The Lakers start their season back up on March 12, playing the Indiana Pacers at home in the Staples Center. LeBron James will be busy on Sunday, playing in the All-Star game.

To the new Los Angeles Lakers fans that are checking us out for the first time, welcome to Lake Show Life Lessons. Our extended post-game report with video analysis will cover the progress for the Los Angeles Lakers the entire season!

Over the next several pages we will provide highlights of certain players and coaches. Afterward, the comment section is loaded with knowledgeable fans adding their basketball knowledge. We usually start with the stars.

 Let’s get to Lesson One to find out who!