On January 24, Beijing time, the Lakers continued their own road trip in the NBA regular season, challenging the Eastern Powerhouse Heat, which is a battle to test the Lakers' success. James spent 4 years in Miami, which is where he became famous, in addition, James also led the Lakers to defeat the Heat in the 2020 Finals to win the championship. There are a lot of stories between the two teams, which makes people look forward to tonight's showdown, but the game has shown a one-sided trend from the beginning, and finally the Heat beat the Lakers 113-107 and reached the top of the East!
Perhaps it is the successive road trips that make the aging Lakers a little tired, and the Lakers' desire for victory, the level of physical confrontation, and the concentration of the game are not as good as the Heat. The Heat, who treated the game like a playoff, got into shape early, firing all the arrows from the outside of the first quarter of the game, pulling the point difference to double digits early.
The second quarter of the game heat still feels hot, inside and outside blossoming, stretching the point difference to 20 points! The two teams' outside touches were in stark contrast, with James struggling to score 18 points at halftime, but the team trailed by 17 points.
In the second half, the Heat's outside feel declined, but the Lakers failed to seize the opportunity, and the two teams spent the third quarter in the sound of iron. In the final quarter, the Lakers are still 19 points behind the Heat, and the Lakers, who are not willing to swallow the defeat, began to improve the defensive intensity, the offensive end is more focused, paying is rewarded, the Heat fell into a scoring drought, and the Lakers once chased the point difference to 4 points!
At the crucial moment, Duncan Robinson hit a difficult three-pointer, and Tucker also received a pass from Adebayor to hit the crucial bottom corner three-pointer to stabilize the situation. The Lakers finally lost a breath, Tucker at a critical moment, first offensive foul to send the opponent a free throw, and then a sideline ball serve error, directly send the Heat counterattack to the basket, the game suspense abruptly stopped!
From trailing by as many as 26 points to chasing four points, the Lakers showed the resilience of the game, and if they had played the offensive and defensive intensity of the final quarter in the whole game, they would have had a chance to win today's game. But the problem was that the aging Lakers couldn't instill that toughness in the whole field, and the game began to loosen and collapse, and they dug a big hole for themselves, in the words of Heat announcer Eric Reid: "The Lakers' defense is like practicing social distancing!" ”
You must know that the opponent is the Heat, not the magic of the deputy squad leader of the East, they are disciplined and will seize the slack of the opponent, seize the opportunity, and will not make continuous mistakes at key moments to hand over the victory to others.
Speaking about the loss after the game, Wei Shao hit the nail on the head: "We were too late to start, we had to come up with more urgency from the beginning of the game, the opponent just played harder than we did. ”
Bradley expressed the same sentiment, "If we played the defensive intensity of the second half at the beginning of the game, I think we could win tonight... A big part of the team's struggling form lately is our inability to maintain a sustained effort every night. ”
For the Lakers, the good news is that thick eyebrows are finally coming back, and it is possible to make a comeback in the game against the Nets the day after tomorrow. If the thick eyebrows can return healthily, the defensive quality of the thick eyebrow lakers inside and outside the line will be greatly improved, and the offensive end will be more three-dimensional, we will wait and see!