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The Los Angeles Lakers
played much differently tonight; they pushed the tempo, fed the ball to the
Dwight Howard, and most importantly, hit their free throws. However, the Lakers
committed a season-high 25 turnovers as the Blazers ran away with this contest
at the end of the 3rd and beginning of the 4th quarter
largely on a 24-7 run.
The whole bench played
confused, lost and generally terrible, except for Steve Blake, who did a very
good job defensively on Damian Lillard, and generally ran the offense with
smoothness. Blake played 28 minutes due to Steve Nash injuring his left leg
during the second quarter. He attempted to come back after a time out, but couldn’t
put much weight on to it; he was ruled out for the game. Despite the turnovers,
the Lakers stayed in the game with great efforts from Dwight Howard and Kobe
Bryant, who channeled their inner Shaq-Kobe, Super-Mamba combo for this game vs.
the Blazers as both scored 30 or more points, however both were also plagued
with foul trouble as they had 5 fouls a-piece. Bryant was making mistake after
mistake with the ball as he had a season-high and team high seven turnovers. The
Blazers pushed the tempo and managed to get 28 very easy points off of
turnovers, combined with 10 offensive rebounds largely leading to easy points
in the paint and with their 45% (9-20) shooting from deep, and you can easily
see why they scored 116 points.
Los Angeles looked helpless against the pick
and roll in the first half, as Damian Lillard had his way with Steve Nash and
scored the majority of his 23 points against him in the first half. Steve Blake
managed to stop some of the bleeding defensively, and pressured Lillard into a
couple of mistakes that helped keep the Lakers in it. Ultimately, turnovers
from Bryant and Metta World Peace kept giving the Blazers easy points in
transition, and keeping the Lakers from making up any ground. Foul trouble
plagued the Lakers; Pau Gasol had 3, Bryant had 5, Howard had 5, World Peace
fouled out; the only starter that wasn’t in foul trouble was Steve Nash, and
for obvious reasons. Los Angeles played a sloppy game all over the court,
except in offensive execution; they shot 50% from the floor, and had 21 assists
to the 36 baskets made and the assists coming from everywhere: Howard had 5,
Nash had 4, Bryant had 3, Gasol had 2, even World Peace was getting into the
passing action and also contributed 2 assists.
Los Angeles had another good
offensive night; ultimately, turnovers and poor defense dooms the Lakers
against the Blazers, wasting an excellent game from its dynamic duo in Dwight
Howard, who finished with 33 points on 9-15 shooting (15-19 from the charity
stripe!), 14 rebounds and 5 assists and Kobe Bryant who chipped in with 30
points and 6 rebounds of his own, while shooting 50% from the floor (10-20) as
LA falls to 0-2 for the second season in a row under head coach Mike Brown.
