However bad your week has gone, it’s unlikely that it’s been worse than what the Lakers have gone through. L.A. got stomped at home by the hated Celtics on Sunday, and now have lost back-to-back heartbreakers to the Magic and Suns. In both of those games they fell behind in the final seconds, then missed a shot to win or tie at the buzzer.
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Last night’s loss had to hurt the most, because not only are the Lakers jockeying with the Suns for Western Conference playoff position, they lost to them when Phoenix was without its two best players, Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks.
Now the Suns own the tiebreaker by virtue of winning three of their four matchups this season (the two teams will meet for a fifth time in the penultimate game of the regular season, but the tiebreaker is already decided).
Grayson Allen was 9-24 from the field and 6-16 from 3 last night, but despite the inefficiency, he kept the Suns in it with a team-high 28 points before Royce O’Neal put the final nail in L.A.’s coffin. Most of his 3s came from well beyond the arc, leading Stephen A. Smith to make a wild comparison on this morning’s First Take.
While lambasting the defense of Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, he asked, “What the hell is Grayson Allen doing looking like the second coming of Steph Curry?” He then asked an equally pertinent question. “Why is your bench getting outscored by 31 points to the Phoenix Suns?”
Depth should have been an issue for Jordan Ott’s team since they were missing Booker and Brooks, but led by Allen, the bench put up 56 points. The Lakers got 11 from Jake LaRavia, 8 from Luka Kennard and 6 from Jaxson Hayes, but that was it.
Stephen A. suggested that Jarred Vanderbilt, one of the few guys on the Lakers with a good defensive reputation, should have gotten more playing time, but Vando finished a ghastly -15 in just six minutes. JJ Redick probably saw all he needed to see there.
The Lakers are now only a game ahead of the Suns for sixth in the West, but they’ll get a chance to show if they learned anything from the Suns loss when they travel to Golden State to take on the Warriors on Saturday.
The Dubs are also short-handed, as they’re missing Jimmy Butler for the year with his torn ACL, and the actual Steph Curry will again be out with his ongoing case of runner’s knee.
It’s a chance for the Lakers to turn the ship around against another banged-up team, and after that, they get to play the dreadful tanking trio of the Kings, Pelicans and Pacers in three of their next four games. If they suffer another setback during this stretch, they’re never going to hear the end of it from Stephen A., nor should they.
