LeBron James glared at the Lakers bench, another chance squandered, another run from the Grizzlies delivered.
There wasn’t much else he could do Wednesday night on the final game of the Lakers’ first road trip. He’d attacked mismatches. He’d swished home triples. He fought like hell with Memphis’ giant 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 clunker, this wasn’t about fight. The Lakers had shown up for that.
But as his team saw a two-point deficit turn to a 11-point deficit after Memphis his three straight threes, James looked at the bench.
It wasn’t anger. It was exasperation. The Lakers were going to eventually lose 131-114, and he couldn’t stop it.
James was terrific — he scored 39 points, made six threes and played with force. His team did too. They just couldn’t make any shots. And they didn’t do enough of the other things that their leader was doing.
“I think LeBron was fantastic tonight,” coach JJ Redick said postgame. “Biggest thing that stood out. I had no idea he’d hit 39 [points] until [after]. I’m not looking at the box scores during the game. But he played hard. Almost 40 years old and played the hardest 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 strong game in a row.
“None of us are [satisfied with the effort],” Redick said.
Asked later how he addressed it with the team, Redick said it was the first thing he did postgame.
“At the end of the day, especially when you lose bodies, you got to compete. You got to compete even harder,” James said. “You got to be out there giving it everything that you got and on both ends. I think there were times that we did that, but the majority of the time, I don’t think we sustained energy and effort.”
Maybe it was all the shots they missed.
D’Angelo Russell put his hands to his head in disbelief as one three rattled out. 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 two-way prospect, posed at 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 [his] level of compete, attention to detail, some of the things we’ve talked with him about for a couple of weeks,” Redick said when asked about the decision. “And at times he’s been really good with that stuff. And other times, it’s just reverting back to certain habits. But it wasn’t like a punishment. It just felt for us to have a chance to win this game, that was the route we wanted to take.”
Ja Morant, who scored 20 points, had to leave the game with a hamstring injury. But with Grizzlies making 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 sideline, he went back to the locker room.
He didn’t receive X-rays in Memphis, but the Lakers didn’t have additional information.
The Lakers finished their road trip 1-4. They play Friday at home against Philadelphia, a stretch where six of their next eight games are in their building.
Pregame, Redick said the ups and downs of the NBA season and the problems that emerge present exciting problems to solve. As the team headed home, dealing with its first set of adversity of the season, Redick challenged his players.
“It goes back to choices. I think [that’s] something that we’ve discussed as a group. And you have a choice every night for how you play — and it has nothing to do with making shots,” he said. “…There’s got to be a group of people, seven, eight guys, that make that choice. And [then] we’re a really good basketball team. [When] we have a handful, we have two or three, we’re not gonna be a good basketball team that night.
“So that’s just the reality. That’s, that’s my biggest takeaway, to be honest.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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