The Lakers took the court tonight against the Indiana Pacers having come
off of the most balanced scoring attack of the season and a thorough beat down
of the Dallas Mavericks. Kobe Bryant was playing with flu-like symptoms; he
still had his 114th career 40 point game.
So what went wrong for
these Lakers? Well, it appears, despite having changed coaches, that the same
old problems haunt the Lakers night in and night out. Coming into this game,
the Lakers were averaging an absolutely TURRIBLE 17 turnovers per game, all
while shooting an extremely frustrating 66.8% from the charity stripe. Los
Angeles chose not to break that trend by turning the ball over 19 times and
hitting only 23 of 43 free throws. That’s only 53.5%, a percentage that I would
expect from Dwight Howard, but not from guys like Metta World Peace, Antawn
Jamison or Darius Morris. On top of continuing the dismal free throw display,
Los Angeles took a whopping 28 three pointers, connecting on 6 of them (21.4%).
It seems Mike D’Antoni’s offense is struggling when Bryant isn’t in a passing
mood; rest assured, he was in a shoot first mode tonight, having taken 28 shots
in the contest. Right now, Los Angeles desperately needs Steve Nash back so the
offense doesn’t hinge on whether or not Bryant feels like passing the ball.
And
yet, despite all of the flaws in the Lakers’ game tonight, they still only lost
on the final possession. The Lakers have been playing a surprising amount of
defense with D’Antoni at the helm, having left the Pacers with 79 points on 36.7%
shooting from the floor. I will say that the Lakers had every opportunity to
win it, but they couldn’t convert on open shots from the perimeter; if Dwight
Howard were hitting his free throws, this wouldn’t be a problem since you could
always just spam it to Howard and have him take it to the rack. The Lakers
really let this one go with their shooting woes all around and it stings even more since it was at home, and the Lakers had just come off of beating the living hell out of Dallas, however I think we
should be patient until Nash is up and running again; there is no telling how
good or bad this offense is going to look once Nash makes his way back to the
hardwood. It appears Nash and Steve Blake will be key for the Lakers during this season, and I believe once Nash comes back, these kind of games will be far and few.
