The Los Angeles Lakers sacrificed a lot to pair Anthony Davis with LeBron James, and together the duo have led their club to the top of the Western Conference.
Whether the Lakers can bring the Larry O’Brien trophy back to Los Angeles remains to be seen, but any chance of that becoming reality would depend on them shooting the ball better than they did on Wednesday night when they dropped a 105-86 decision to the Thunder.
The loss was the Lakers’ second straight after losing to the Toronto Raptors on Monday night, but what was worse for LeBron and co. is the fact that he and Davis turned in arguably their worst performance as teammates.
On Wednesday night, LeBron James (7-for-19) and Anthony Davis (3-for-11) combined to connect on just 33% of their shots from the field. Their combined shooting performance of 10-for-30 is the worst they’ve had since becoming teammates prior to the 2019-20 season.
For the most part, James and Davis are two of the league’s more efficient players, but the poor shooting performance supplanted their Friday-night clunker against the Los Angeles Clippers where the duo connected on a combined 37% of their looks from the field. The shooting performance that night didn’t get much attention, though, because (1) the Lakers won the game, and (2) James was actually the poor performer who weighed down the sum; Davis ended the night with 30 points on 11-for-19 shooting from the field.
On Wednesday, however, both of the stars had off nights and the Lakers were dominated.
The only other two times this season the duo shot less than 40% from the field was on Oct. 22 against the Clippers (a loss) and Dec. 11 against the Orlando Magic (a win). They shot 38% and 39% from the field in those contests, respectively.
With just four games to go before the postseason begins, though, the superstars tandem needs to find its touch.
They know it, too.
“I think we have some great possessions, I think sometimes we have some early, quick, shot selections, some bad shot selections throughout the course of some of these games, but for the majority, I feel like we got some great looks… We’ll continue to find good looks, find great looks and our shooters, including myself, and everybody else, we’ll get our rhythm and start making some.”
Davis agreed — it’s not time for the team to panic.
“It’s not really more so our offense, our offennse is actualy good… it’s just the shootign that we have to take our time in knocking downn shots. we’re getting everything was want offensively.”
On Wednesday night, though, the Lakers couldn’t get a win. Not even against a team that was only given a 0.2% chance of making the playoffs.