The Los Angeles Lakers keep finding new ways to lose. On Wednesday, it was a 41-point shellacking in Miami, where the Lakers didn’t even look mildly interested in competing. On Friday they brought a little more juice in Atlanta, but they absolutely fell apart down the stretch, fumbling multiple opportunities to likely ice the game before ultimately getting iced themselves by a Trae Young game-winner in overtime.
Hawks 134, Lakers 132. Game over.
So Young, who finished with another monster line of 31 points and 20 assists, winds up the hero, but how did it get to that point for the Lakers?
With a one-point lead and possession with 30 seconds to play in overtime, L.A. had a chance to all but seal the game with a bucket — they would have been able to play the foul game from there with a three-point lead. Instead, Anthony Davis tossed the laziest pass possible, and LeBron James didn’t do him any favors by moving away from the ball rather than sealing his defender off and moving toward the pass, and Dyson Daniels — the Great Barrier Thief himself who leads the NBA in steals by a laughable margin — stepped in for what looked like a pick-six the other way.
However, the Lakers got away with this first botch job because not only did LeBron chase down Daniels and block his shot from behind, but upon review it was also determined that the ball had last touched Daniels’ fingertip on its way out of bounds, giving possession right back to the Lakers.
So now the Lakers have another shot to wrap up the game with the ball at half court, still a one-point lead, and now under 24 seconds to play. The Hawks are going to be forced to foul as long as the Lakers get it inbounded cleanly and avoid a tie-up … which they don’t, as Davis is immediately triple-teamed because not a single other Laker makes himself available for a pass and Atlanta steals itself a jump ball.
Still, the Lakers should be OK, right? It’s the 6-10 Davis vs. Daniels, who’s just 6-foot-7, on the jump. Surely the Lakers should be able to come away with possession of the tip and, finally, get themselves to the free throw line to ice the game.
Wrong again.
Davis tips the ball into an open area of court and three Lakers have a shot to track it down. D’Angelo Russell, who continues to prove himself to be a losing player, doesn’t even try for it. Gabe Vincent gets blown off the starting block by De’Andre Hunter, who is now in a footrace with LeBron, who winds up knocking the ball out of bounds. Hawks possession.
And yet, the Lakers still had a chance to close this win out on the defensive end, where their execution was equally problematic. Take a look at the Young game-winner again, and you’ll see that Vincent has no reason to leave Young to run back to Hunter, who is already covered by Davis.
It was a chaotic situation in which a split-second decision could prove catastrophic, and that, ironically, is what Vincent was so worried about. He was so paranoid about Hunter being left open for a 3-pointer that he wound up abandoning his own man, Young, who was the most dangerous shooter on the court in that situation even if Hunter’s numbers are much better from 3 this season.
And that, my friends, is how you choke away a basketball game. It’s a killer for the Lakers, who have now lost three straight and seven of their last nine. We all know that LeBron and AD have to be extraordinary if the Lakers are going to compete for a playoff spot, let alone anything beyond that, but it appears that may not even be enough. The duo combined for 77 points, 20 rebounds and 19 assists on Friday and still the Lakers couldn’t manage to pull out a game against the barely-above-.500 Hawks.
The Lakers will try to end this skid on Sunday when they host the Blazers.
