Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers
Sports:Basketball
Lakers Lose to Kings in OT, Darvin Ham to Tighten Rotation. Plus, Austin Reaves Is Struggling.
2023-10-30
In context, 1-2 is neither bad nor surprising for the Lakers three games in. They opened on the road against the Nuggets, the defending champs and current consensus "best team in the league." They won at home against Phoenix (albeit in less-than-dominant fashion), and then Sunday lost in OT to Sacramento, who return basically intact a team that was the 3-seed last season.
But Sunday's 132-127 loss is nonetheless a disappointment, because the Lakers had a chance to win, and instead let it get away. And given how competitive the conference is likely to be this season, any truly winnable game (the Lakers had 4th quarter leads) that turns into a loss will feel like a missed opportunity. Especially winnable games against conference rivals.
LeBron James and Anthony Davis were both excellent Sunday night. LeBron again blew through his target minutes window en route to 27 points on an efficient 11-19 shooting, plus 15 rebounds and eight assists. Anthony Davis had 30/16/2/2/3. But while Taurean Prince helped give the Lakers some balance, Austin Reaves (1-12) was pretty awful and Gabe Vincent (3 shots in 32 minutes) was a massive non-factor.
Reaves in particular has to pick it up, because there isn't a player on the team with a bigger gap to this point between expected/needed production and actual output on the court. So why has Reaves been so out of sorts? What might be done to get him going the right way again?
One thing that will likely help him, and the rest of the team (on both sides of the ball) is a more consistent, tightened rotation, which Darvin Ham says is coming. He acknowledged that to this point, the patterns haven't been consistent enough, and that likely it includes too many players. That's something he and the staff will look at, though we might not get to see the results until Wednesday if LeBron, for example, sits out the second night of the back-to-back tonight, at home against Orlando.
HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky
SEGMENT 1: The Lakers lose a tough one in Sacramento, and Ham is going to be looking at the rotation.
SEGMENT 2: Austin Reaves is stuck in Strugglesville.
SEGMENT 3: Did Darvin Ham make the wrong call not playing Rui Hachimura to finish the game?
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