Five takeaways from the Lakers’ 102-97 loss to the Pistons
After two blowout losses, the Lakers faced an opponent less daunting on Sunday night.
The Detroit Pistons hadn’t been playing defense especially well lately, and they were in the bottom half of the league offensively. The Lakers had several opportunities late in the game, but couldn’t capitalize.
Here are five takeaways from Sunday’s game.
1. The starters struggled to score, with D’Angelo Russell the only one who reached double figures. The Lakers are at their best when they have several players in double digits. Interestingly, the best plus/minus rating of the whole team was earned by Luol Deng. Deng only had two points, but he had seven rebounds and a plus/minus rating of 11.
2. Deng, Julius Randle and Brandon Ingram each made one shot. Deng took six, Randle took six and Ingram took seven.
3. Pistons center Andre Drummond had some dramatic positives and negatives. He airballed a free throw, he missed a wide open dunk, but he also scored seven of the Pistons’ last nine points to end the first half, and he had 17 rebounds. Despite all that, the Pistons didn’t beat up the Lakers in the paint like the Clippers and Spurs did. The Lakers had 46 points in the paint to the Pistons’ 42.
4. Lou Williams is 30 years old, one of the veterans on the Lakers’ roster, and he was asked whether some of the Lakers mistakes can be cleaned up now. “It definitely can improve right now. I don’t want to keep using the young team thing. At some point we gotta show growth collectively as a group. Obviously we do have young guys and we’re depending on some young guys that’s learning on the fly so some of these things, like sharing the ball, that should be second nature at this point.”
5. As Ingram navigates the physicality of the NBA, Lakers Coach Luke Walton explained his process for evaluating how Ingram is doing. “A couple times they got the better of him,” Walton said. “A couple times he made them miss. Brandon never backs down from that type of stuff. I think that’s more important than who wins that individual matchup right now. The fact that he wants those challenges and the fact that he doesn’t just start cowering away from it, I’ll take that.”
Twitter: @taniaganguli
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