At the conclusion of the Los Angeles Lakers 103 to 99 loss to the Philadelphia 76ers last night there was a lot of talk from the Lakers players about the team being old and lacking energy.
“Cause we’re old as s—,” said Kobe Bryant. “What do you want? We just got to figure out how to play when we don’t have that energy. We got to change things up a little bit defensively. We got to figure out what we want to do offensively, figure out what we want to do on nights when we don’t have those legs or have that energy.”
Defense has been a problem all season dating back to the defensive minded Mike Brown regime. Those defensive problems continued last night. The Philadelphia 76ers, a team that averages 93 points a game on the season, scored 103 points and shot 47.7% from the field.
Former UCLA stand out Jrue Holiday scored a team high 26 points and 10 assists for the 76ers. Even Turner played well and contributed 22 points and 13 rebounds.
While the Lakers’ roster is definitely up there in age, last night had more to do with everybody outside of Kobe Bryant just being off with their shooting touch; especially the bigs.
Pau Gasol was 2 for 12 from the field.
Dwight Howard was 1 for 7 from the field.
The Lakers as a team were 3 for 22 from behind the 3 point line.
The Lakers were actually not getting killed in some of the areas that have plagued them all season last night against the 76ers. The Lakers outscored the 76ers in the paint 52 to 38 and dominated the fast break points 25-10. The Lakers also limited their turnovers to just 7 for the game. However, the Lakers couldn’t recover from a poor shooting night of 39.4% from the field and lackluster defensive effort.
Kobe Bryant had more thoughts on the teams’ performance last night:
“You just saw an old damn team,…I don’t know how else to put it to you. We’re just slow. You saw a team over there that was just younger and just had fresher legs and just played with more energy, and we were just stuck in the mud. I think individually we all have to figure out how to get ourselves ready each and every game to have a high level of energy. That’s all that is.”
If age is the reason that energy levels are low and that is the main contributor to poor offensive execution and defensive effort that will pose a very gloomy outlook for the rest of the season as the Lakers aren’t getting any younger. For the sake of the Lakers championship hopes this season lets hope that the problems stem more from lack of continuity due to implementing a new system after the start of the season as that is something that can improve.
The Lakers next game is Friday at Staples, a road game, against the Los Angeles Clippers.
– Fern Rea “@fullcourtfern”, “@raining3sdotcom”
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