The extraordinary athlete stepped on to the Crypto.com court baseline during the first quarter of the Lakers season opener Tuesday night amid great buzz.
When his smiling face was later shown on the video board, he was enveloped in the night’s loudest individual cheers.
Luka Doncic? LeBron James?
No, Blake Snell.
One game under the unofficial Dodger regime, and the Lakers are already showing their new owners what they are missing.
They need more Dodgers.
With injured and bespectacled James watching stoically from the end of the Laker bench while new owner Mark Walter was witnessing the same mess in a baseline seat nearby, the Lakers stumbled their way to a 119-109 loss to the Golden State Warriors.
Yes, they have Doncic, and he was awesome with 43 points. And, yes, they have a stronger Austin Reaves, and he was decent with 26 points and nine assists.
But, no, they don’t have the Dodger-like depth required to survive without James, even though the guy is 40, and the next couple of weeks while he is dealing with his sciatica are going to feel like forever.
On a night when nothing lit up the room like the sight of Bill Hader hanging with Ali Wong, the welcome mat to a new season was frayed, stained, and contained a message that began something like this: Nineteen turnovers, nine missed free throws, three second-chance baskets…
New center Deandre Ayton? He only had two offensive rebounds. Reliable Rui Hachimura? He barely showed up, not taking his second shot until late in the second quarter and scoring on only three treys.
Newcomers Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia provided some of the expected energy but Smart had three turnovers and LaRavia made just two shots.
Contrast this with a Golden State team that had all of its players, and got great use of all of them, four dudes in double figures and Steph Curry not required to score in the fourth quarter until the final minute.
The Warriors are a clear championship contending team. If the Lakers can’t play any better without their aging wonder, they will contend for zilch.
“It’s hard to forget about LeBron, [but] the reality is, when you’re focused on the group that you have, you’ve got to make the group work,” said Coach JJ Redick afterward. “I’ll be honest with you, I did have one moment in that first half when we had a few possessions when we couldn’t score against the zone and I thought, ‘It’d be great to have LeBron.”
Austin Reaves drives against Golden State’s Quinten Post in the second half Tuesday.
(Eric Thayer/Los Angeles Times)
The Lakers actually hung in there for a half, trailing by one after two quarters, but then they totally collapsed in the third quarter, as they have done often under Redick.
They were outscored 18-4 at the start of the second half, sending the crowd into a coma and the game toward the trash until they surged back within six in the final minutes.
What on earth is happening in that locker room at halftime? Apparently nothing.
“The trend I see is that we continue to be a terrible third-quarter team…that was last year, that was the preseason,” said Redick. “Gotta rethink some things and it’s, you know, a two-way thing with the guys. What do they need at halftime to make sure they’re ready to play? They’re not ready to play to start the third quarter.”
As it turns out, they weren’t ready to play in those final minutes either, when they couldn’t overcome that six-point deficit because they couldn’t get out of their own way.
In a stretch in the final minutes, Draymond Green hit a three, Reaves missed a free throw, Jimmy Butler sank a wide open layup, Butler made two free throws after being fouled on another wide-open layup, and Gary Payton II dunked. Game over.
Redick didn’t want to credit Golden State, and judging from the number of groans from a crowd that didn’t stick around until the end, it’s hard to blame him.
“A microcosm of this game was, we did enough good things to put ourselves in a position to win for most of the game,” said Redick. “And when we didn’t do those things, they were self-inflicted.”
Such as?
“That’s not being organized in early offense,” said Redick. “That’s having the wrong guy bring it up.”
He was just getting started.
“Not sprinting back,” he said. “We make a run, we got two guys back, Buddy Hield gets a wide-open three for some reason on a full-court pass. Those are self-inflicted things. So it’s not anything Golden State did to us.”
Sounds even worse than it looked.
Before the game, Redick stressed the need for the Lakers role players to be their best.
“We need our guys to star in their roles,” he said. “I don’t think that changes if LeBron is in the lineup or out of the lineup. We need our guys to star in their roles.”
That didn’t happen Tuesday. In fact, most of the game consisted of three guys standing around while Doncic fired or Reaves drove.
How boring. How baffling. How scary.
The evening began with a midcourt greeting from Doncic.
“It’s gonna be a very exciting season,” he proclaimed.
Not so fast.
This story originally appeared on LA Times
