LeBron James glared at the Lakers bench, another opportunity squandered, another Grizzlies point delivered.
There wasn’t much else he could do Wednesday night in the final game of the Lakers’ first road trip. He had attacked mismatches. He had been hitting home triples. He fought like hell with Memphis’ massive front line.
His team was short-handed. Anthony Davis’ heel contusion, an injury he suffered Monday in Detroit, kept him out of action. An illness did the same to Rui Hachimura.
Unlike the losses in Cleveland and Detroit that ensured this trip would be a flop, this wasn’t about fighting. That’s what the Lakers signed up for.
But when his team saw a two-point deficit turn into an 11-point deficit after Memphis hit three straight threes, James looked to the bench.
It wasn’t anger. It was an annoyance. The Lakers would ultimately lose 131-114, and he couldn’t stop it.
James was great: he scored 39 points, made six threes and played with force. His team did too. They just couldn’t make shots. And they didn’t do enough of the other things their leader did.
“I think LeBron was fantastic tonight,” coach JJ Redick said after the game. “The biggest thing that stood out. I had no idea he had turned 39 [points] to [after]. I don’t look at the box scores during the game. But he played hard. Almost 40 years old and the hardest played on our team.
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“It says a lot about him.”
And it says a lot about the rest of the Lakers, save for a few like Cam Reddish, who had his second straight strong game.
“None of us are [satisfied with the effort],” said Redick.
When Redick was later asked how he handled the team, he said it was the first thing he did after the game.
“At the end of the day, especially when you lose bodies, you have to compete. You have to compete even harder,” James said. “You have to be there and give it everything you have, and on both sides. I think there have been times when we have done that, but I think most of the time we haven’t sustained the energy and effort.”
Maybe it was all the shots they missed.
D’Angelo Russell put his hands on his head in disbelief when a three rattled off. Austin Reaves yelled at himself after one of his seven misses. And Dalton Knecht, getting his first career NBA start, missed all but one of his seven shots from three, including an airball.
Meanwhile, Memphis punished the Lakers with mini flurries from their role players. Rookie Jaylen Wells hit back-to-back threes. So did former Lakers two-way center Jay Huff. Scotty Pippen Jr., another former Lakers prospect, posed on his former bench after hitting one of his three threes.
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Redick later pulled Russell from the game midway through the third quarter.
“Just now [his] level of competition, attention to detail, some things we’ve been talking to him about for a few weeks,” Redick said when asked about the decision. “And sometimes he was really good with that kind of thing. And other times it just returns to certain habits. But it was not a punishment. It just felt to us that we had a chance to win this game, that was the route we wanted to take.
Ja Morant, who scored twenty points, had to leave the game with a hamstring injury. But considering Grizzlies made 17 threes, they had more than enough.
In addition to the cold shooting, Knecht had to leave the game after being elbowed in the jaw by Jake LaRavia. After having his jaw examined on the sidelines, he went back to the locker room.
He did not receive X-rays in Memphis, but the Lakers had no additional information.
The Lakers finished their road trip 1-4. They play Philadelphia at home on Friday, a period in which six of their next eight games are in construction.
Pregame, Redick said the ups and downs of the NBA season and the issues that arise present exciting problems to solve. As the team headed home and faced its first setbacks of the season, Redick challenged his players.
“It’s about choices. I think [that’s] something we discussed as a group. And you have a choice every night how you play – and it has nothing to do with making shots,” he said. “…There has to be a group of people, seven, eight guys, who make that choice. And [then] We are a very good basketball team. [When] We have a handful, we have two or three. We won’t be a good basketball team that night.
“So that’s just the reality. That, to be honest, is my biggest takeaway.”
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
