The Los Angeles Lakers lost their third straight on Sunday night, falling to the Nuggets 128 – 104.
With LeBron James out, Anthony Davis went off for 32 points, 11 points, and four blocks, but it wasn’t enough as Denver cruised to an easy victory. The Nuggets got scoring from just about everyone, with six players contributing with double-digit points.
This is the big question for the Lakers right now, and one that needs to be answered: How can this team win games when one of their stars is out?
What’s interesting about this Lakers team is that L.A. also doesn’t have much (or any) success when LeBron James is out (understandable), but they also can’t seem to perform when Davis is out, too.
I wrote about it last week after the Pacers beat an AD-less Lakers team — without Davis on the floor to space things on offense and defend the rim on defense, the Lakers have to go to Dwight Howard, who can’t space anything.
With Howard clogging the paint, LeBron has no room to work, and the entire Lakers offense comes sputtering to a halt.
When James is out, the Lakers have different problems. Now, their brain is gone. The team goes from having a genius Swiss Army Knife running the offense to Rajon Rondo and AD running a pick-and-roll without enough good shooters around them.
Rondo can’t shoot, so defenders can go under on the pick, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Avery Bradley aren’t good enough shooters to keep defenders honest, so teams can double AD.
Davis is still so good he’s going to get his points, even doubled, but the rest of the team? Yikes. You could watch as Frank Vogel threw just about everything at the Nuggets, trying to find something that would work.
Alex Caruso played 22 minutes. Kyle Kuzma got 22. Quinn Cook had 17 minutes. Dwight Howard split time with JaVale McGee. Troy Daniels got 10 minutes. Nothing seemed to work.
What’s more concerning for the Lakers is how bad they are defensively. The defensive talent is there, they just don’t have the intensity right now. AD was furious after the game. “With or without [LeBron], we suck defensively,” he said after the loss.
Playing Nikola Jokic is tough, but it’s not like the Nuggets came in with a surprising game plan. They got Jokic the ball in the high post, and players cut off him. The Lakers didn’t stay with the cutters. The Nuggets had a lot of easy buckets.
Lakers fans can chalk this all up and just say “well we’re good when our two stars are on the floor, who cares?” But championship teams have answers when lineups get wonky. Even in the playoffs, things happen. Guys get knocks. LeBron and AD are two strong guys, but they’re human.
If they really want to win a title, the Lakers need to figure out how to play when one of their stars is missing. When James and AD are on the floor, the Lakers are just about impossible to defend, and when locked in defensively, they can get stops when they need them.
But Frank Vogel isn’t going to have James and AD on the floor for 82 games, and he needs to figure out a way for his team to be competitive when one (or both) is missing if the Lakers want to find the success they expect this year.
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