HomeSportsLakers router the clippers, win their first game after emotional Anthony Davis...

Lakers router the clippers, win their first game after emotional Anthony Davis Trade

Laker Austin Reaves drives along clipper James Harden in the second quarter on the Intuit Dome Tuesday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

Of course the Lakers were excited, a multi-year MVP candidate who was now at the end of their bank in Luka Doncic, a 25-year-old offensive Maestro now in their schedule.

Of course the attacking possibilities that he plays with LeBron James and with Austin Reaves, from waving passes to Dorian Finney-Smith and Rui Hachimura for Open Hoek Three have JJ Redick ready to go to work.

But whatever happened during the 122-97 victory of the Lakers on the Clippers on Tuesday, the feelings of the team after this trade are certainly more complex.

For 47 games, the Lakers tried to solve the problems that their selection presented, to find the best ways to hide their mistakes, accentuate their strengths and maximize their potential. And after a victory against the Knicks last Saturday evening, the Lakers could see it.

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They were close.

And then everything was different. The previous season was over. The new season was about to start. And there was sadness in that.

“Guys will feel a certain way,” said coach JJ Redick. “And there is a grieving process. There is an excitement and a rebirth process. There are all these things and these things take time. It is not, we are not going to wave a magic wand and say,” Ah, we’re good today. ” As if it takes time.

But even without Anthony Davis, even without Max Christie and even without Doncic, who is still recovering from a calf injury, the Lakers looked like a team that is still planning to reach that mission, melancholic or not.

Against the clippers at Intuit Dome, the Lakers continued to play with the kind of intensity, the kind of focus and the kind of execution that they believed to win this season in the first place.

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James, as he was for most of the recent road trip of the Lakers, played with the kind of timeless energy at both ends of the court that should not be possible for a player in season 22. He scored 26 points at eight 13 shooting after opening the game by making his first five shots. And without Davis or Christie on the floor, he was one of the most active defenders of the Lakers.

Reaves and Hachimura each scored 20 – the 40 points came only 27 combined recordings. Add Reaves from nine assists. And Jaxson Hayes, the likely starting center of Lakers, played 24 minutes with six points, six rebounds, four assists – and only two errors – giving the Lakers an athletic presence around the edge on both sides of the court.

The clippers, who, just like the Lakers, played their last game from the east, usually looked lifeless in a game where they never led more than one point. Kawhi Leonard, who took the defense of the Lakers in their last meeting, only scored 11 points in 23 minutes. Ivica Zubac, who dominated the interior so well that Davis publicly asked the Lakers to add a center a day later, only made two shots to go with his 10 rebounds. And Finney-Smith James Harden was difficult at the circumference in a two-by-12 night in which he only scored seven points, are the second worst scoring match of the season.

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The Lakers kept the clippers at 37.8%, their fifth-stringest shooting game of the season. The Lakers ended with five different players with at least six rebounds.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

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