The Los Angeles Lakers opened their playoff journey with a loss to the second-seeded Phoenix Suns on Sunday. The Suns defeated the Lakers, 99-90, and have now taken a lead in the seven-game series over the purple and gold.
This is coming after touting how good of a matchup this was for the Lakers. While the Suns were the second-best regular-season team in the West, the Lakers still had more talent and had the matchup advantage on top of that.
However, with the Suns being the second-seed and having home-court advantage, it is easy to feel a certain way after watching how the Lakers played in Game 1 and falling behind to Phoenix.
It is easy to get worried about the Los Angeles Lakers’ loss in Game 1, but don’t be.
Yes, the Lakers now have to win four of the next six games and have certainly made it harder to beat Phoenix in the series, but it is nothing to worry about. Do they have to buckle down and take Phoenix seriously? Absolutely.
But is it time to hit the panic button? Not even close. Don’t even pull the panic button out. Leave it stashed away wherever you store your panic button. The Los Angeles Lakers are just fine, let’s break down why.
1. It was a legitimate anomaly that the Los Angeles Lakers lost
It feels like a cop-out for any person to say that a loss was an anomaly but it legitimately was an anomaly that the Los Angeles Lakers lost this game. They were not heavily outplayed and they were not outmatched in any way. They beat themselves and this is something that likely won’t happen over the course of a seven-game series.
Sure, there are certain areas in which Phoenix did outplay the Lakers but those areas are not sustainable. Deandre Ayton is not going to have the offensive rebounding game that he had in Game 1 throughout the entire season. It just is not going to happen.
The Lakers were getting good looks and taking good shots and were just… missing them. Based on the quality of shots taken by both teams, the Lakers were actually projected to win this game by 10 points, not lose it by nine. According to historic ShotQuality data, the Lakers had an 83% chance of winning this game.
Quite frankly, the Lakers played as poorly as you can realistically expect them to play and they still lost by only nine. Now just imagine how well the team is going to do when they are playing good basketball and actually hitting the shots that they typically hit?
The Lakers still held the Suns to 99 points despite letting up far too many rebounds and giving them far too many fastbreak chances by missing shots they should have made. The Suns did not beat the Lakers in this game, the Lakers beat themselves.
2. Let’s not forget what the Los Angeles Lakers did in the playoffs last year
It is easy to only look at the most recent result for the Los Angeles Lakers and the most recent result is not a good one. The Lakers lost Game 1 and now trail in a series that they don’t have hourt-court advantage in. That is exactly the opposite of what you want to happen in Game 1.
But when we look back at the Lakers’ title run last season we then realize that this happened not once but twice to the Lakers. Los Angeles lost Game 1 to both the Portland Trail Blazers and Houston Rockets before going on to gentleman’s sweep both teams, winning in five games.
Of course,the situations are different as they are not in a bubble and the Suns are not either of those teams, but it helps represent what happens in a typical Lakers playoff series.
Frank Vogel is the master of adjustments and sometimes those adjustments lead him and the Lakers to not play the best basketball right away. Once they lock-in, the other team is hopeless. That is what happened to both Portland and Houston as the Lakers thoroughly outplayed them.
We saw an exaggerated version of this in the play-in game against the Golden State Warriors. The Lakers made the right adjustments, starting hitting the shots they were missing in the first half and were very obviously the better team in the second half.
That will happen in this series. By the time it is all over and the Lakers win their fourth game of the series it won’t even look like the same Suns team that played in Game 1.