Five takeaways from the Lakers’ 113-109 loss to the Knicks

Tuesday night’s game had some high-profile attendees — something that tends to happen when at Madison Square Garden.

There was, of course, the regular crowd — Spike Lee, Odell Beckham Jr., musicians, other New York Giants and some models. But the Lakers brought their top brass too. General manager Rob Pelinka, president of basketball operations Magic Johnson and controlling owner Jeanie Buss all attended the game.

The Lakers lost, 113-109, in overtime. But it wasn’t the kind of loss that should be all that troubling. Here are five takeaways from Tuesday night’s game.

1. Lonzo Ball had one of his best games offensively. Ball played more than 39 minutes and scored 17 points. He added eight rebounds and six assists. Of course, 10 of those 17 points came in the third quarter, but that was a dazzling 67-second span. Don’t forget, either, that some of what Ball does well doesn’t show up on the stat sheet. His hockey assists (the pass before the assist) and the way he pushed the pace helped the Lakers.

2. Ball and Frank Ntilikina, the Knicks’ rookie first-round pick, found each other after the game to say hello. “He is a great player,” Ball said. “He is young like me playing in a big city.”

3. Brandon Ingram had an off night in first game as the Lakers’ declared starting small forward. Ingram played 41 minutes but only scored five points on two-of-12 shooting. He had seven rebounds and five assists. Meanwhile, the player who got the fewest minutes among the Lakers’ regular rotation players is Jordan Clarkson, who scored 12 points in his 20 minutes of playing time.

4. Two problems that plagued the Lakers throughout the season seem to have subsided during this road trip. The Lakers aren’t turning over the ball nearly as much — they had 14 turnovers against the Hornets and 16 against the Knicks. And Tuesday night, they made 80% of their free throws. A solid showing from a team that was shooting worse than 70% before this road trip.

5. The Lakers’ clock management toward the end of overtime was a little bit bizarre. I asked Luke Walton what he would have liked to see in that final minute or so. “I thought we started rushing a little bit,” Walton said. “Two-, four-point game, even a six-point game, is nothing. We had 2½ minutes left; I felt like we tried to go a little too individual a lot of times in overtime, obviously the last play would have been nice to take a foul right away especially since we had a foul to give. Steal and try to force a steal on the inbounds and then a foul again after that. There was a two-for-one late somewhere in there that we took too early, but those are all things that we’ll show tape on and talk about and get better at.”

tania.ganguli@latimes.com

Follow Tania Ganguli on Twitter @taniaganguli