On March 28, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued, the Lakers lost to the Pelicans 108-116, lost the key card position battle, after this battle, the Pelicans rose to ninth in the West, and the Lakers fell to tenth in the West. It should be noted that the Lakers have only one win left ahead of the next Spurs and may lose the qualification for the playoffs at any time.
Although it is an away game, the Lakers played quite actively from the beginning, especially James and Westbrook, two star players, who joined hands to cut 18 points in a single quarter to lead the team to gain the upper hand; in the second quarter, James was more full of firepower to shoot 14 points in a single quarter to lead the team to lay a double-digit lead, at most, the Lakers once led by as many as 23 points.
After yibian fought again, the situation on the field suddenly changed, the Lakers encountered physical challenges on the offensive end, and the defensive end was waterloo to let the opponent get 41 points in a single quarter; entering the fourth quarter of the decisive victory, the Lakers still failed to find their state on the offensive end, and the whole team only scored 14 points in the whole quarter, and could only swallow the bitter fruit of the defeat.
As a star, James scored a game-high 39 points in 14 of 27 shooting in this game and grabbed 9 rebounds to deliver 5 assists, one step closer to the second career scoring champion, in addition, his career total scores after this game also reached 37,022 points, becoming the youngest Mr. 37,000 points in history.
However, James' performance on the offensive end of this game is a microcosm of the Lakers' overall performance. Throughout the first half, James was full of impact, personally scoring 25 points and leading the team to the advantage; but in the second half, he had physical problems, and only 5 of 14 shots in the two quarters, especially in the fourth quarter of the decisive tiebreaker, he only scored 4 points on 8 shots and 2.
Maybe, for a 37-year-old veteran, James has done so much, it's already quite good, we shouldn't ask him to do more, but the reality is that for this Lakers team, it's far from enough.
For most of the season, Westbrook was seen as a scapegoat for the team's poor record, but the 9-time All-Star has been doing well lately and playing more and more reasonably, scoring 18 points, 7 rebounds and 6 assists on 8-of-15 shooting in this game, shooting 50% in four consecutive games. Considering that throughout the season, Wei Shao has been constantly adjusting, constantly adapting, and then pushing the responsibility to him is a bit too much.
Head coach Vogel is regarded as one of the key factors in the Lakers' loss in this game, throughout the fourth quarter, he once discharged a small lineup of Westbrook + Munch + Rivers + James + Anthony, perhaps he wanted to improve the team's offensive attack, but accidentally further magnified the flaws in the defensive end, and the use of defenders to defend the forward was to make the defense collapse, directly leading to the final loss.
To paraphrase a sentence from netizens, full strength Zhan has, reasonable turtle has, bench seats are still better than each other, but the Lakers still can't win the ball, is it just a lack of a healthy eyebrow?