“Everybody’s trying to be assertive on what they can bring to the table and what they can do to help the team when a lot of it is ‘what can we do?’, ‘how are we going to do it?’, including myself. “Everybody’s trying to figure it out on their own,” Russell said. Maybe a lack of cohesion is the cause of the Lakers’ standstill, but the offense looked especially stagnant for most of Wednesday. “We can’t build cohesion if we don’t have our unit,” James said. It’s certainly affected any attempts at team-building. We’re trying to fight through this rough patch.”

The biggest thing for me is I’m proud of my guys. It takes guys out of their normal role where they know they’d be coming into the game. “It’s a reality of the business, injuries,” Ham said. The news dampened the Lakers’ mood after the team was able to get Hachimura through the last stages of concussion protocols. “It’s almost like we have a trade every day, you know?”ĭavis, who had to leave Monday’s game because of hip spasms, had hoped to play until he was a late scratch. “Every day, we have a different lineup, we play with different guys, new guys come in, kinda,” said forward Rui Hachimura, who returned after missing four games. The Lakers weren’t making excuses, but they knew it would be a challenge without Davis. “I thought in that first quarter tonight, in particular, and it’s been this way, the second-chance points that we give teams and the second and third opportunities, that’s been a little bit of an Achilles’ heel for us. And then getting hits and trying to come up with long, difficult rebounds and 50-50 balls.

“Sprinting back in transition defense - that’s why we’ve been harping on that all year and will continue to harp on that. “The game is always, in my opinion, won by doing the little things, the details, you know?” coach Darvin Ham said Wednesday. D’Angelo Russell is minus-49 and Anthony Davis minus-52. If that’s not bleak enough, no Laker has a positive first-quarter plus/minus. That’s a wild number even for a team that’s trailed by 10 or more in the opening quarter six times already.

The Lakers need to hope this is just a trend and not a fatal flaw.Īfter Houston became the latest team to pounce on the Lakers in the first quarter, they have been outscored by 74 points in the opening 12 minutes, the most by any team in NBA history for the first eight games of a season, per ESPN Stats and Info.

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