The Los Angeles Lakers had a rough week but a victory against an old friend brought their record up to 4-5.
It appears that the Lakers won’t be a good team this year, but they’re showing the quality needed to claw their way out of the bottom tier of the NBA. The team is displaying shockingly great defensive play while questions still linger about the offensive output from the guard position.
Game Recaps
The Lakers started the week with a couple of losses; Kyle Lowry handed the growing Lakers a baby triple-double and a loss to the Toronto Raptors they’ll want back. Julius Randle was the lone standout, notching 18 points on 75 percent shooting.
Nothing is more frightening than running into Ricky Rubio on the second night of a back-to-back. The Lakers did just that and the team resembled a naive teenager in a bad slasher movie. Ingram had 16 points and four steals while rookie Donovan Mitchell had 22 points on the night.
The Lakers had a few days off before facing a red-hot Detroit Pistons rolling into town. The Pistons were put down fairly quickly due to a balanced attack; seven Lakers were in double-digits while Ingram had another four steal game.
Thursday night’s matchup against the Trail Blazers could have gone… better. The Lakers found themselves asking “what time is it” and Damian Lillard had the answer, knocking down a step-back three over the outstretched arms of Brandon Ingram with moments remaining on the clock. A moment of praise for Caldwell-Pope’s go-ahead three to tie the game up before Lillard’s shot, forever lost in time.
Friday night hailed the return of LA’s ex-golden child: D’Angelo Russell. A lot of expectations were put on Russell, but Brook Lopez continued his splendid form in his first game against his former team. Lopez had 34 points and 10 rebounds in 30 minutes. The Lakers never put the game away, but it didn’t really get close enough to stress about the result.
Five Stories from the Week
Been out of touch with the site? Check out these posts from the past week.
Larry Nance, Jr. breaks his hand: Larry had an unfortunate injury in the fourth quarter of the Portland game, it’s his off-hand and he is expected to miss at least a month’s worth of action.
Roy Hibbert is depending on Kobe Bryant… again: Bryant recently revealed that a few players go to him for investment advice. The main one? Laker legend Roy Hibbert of course.
Mailbag Monday: Our most recent mailbag Monday was a special Halloween edition with some great questions. Honi even called candy corn the best Halloween candy! You can voice your displeasure with him here.
LeBron sent Lonzo Ball a birthday tweet and we thought that was suspicious: Number codes, breaking down letters and various other code-breaking methods that may or may not actually work. Journalism will never die on our watch.
Mychal Thompson has a few words for THE clueless Drew Hernandez:
and moreover, he let us do this pic.twitter.com/HMBi1XboLt
— honi 🇮🇷 (@HoniAhm) November 4, 2017
Drew, you’re fired.
