The new NBA season officially started with the battle of LA and the stars did not disappoint. The new look Lakers faced off against Leonard’s Clippers. Though it was a Clippers home game, Staples Centre was filled with Lakers fans excited to watch Lebron and AD together.
Early on the Lakers took control of the game as they restricted Leonard to just 4 points in the first quarter and took a three-point lead by the end of the quarter.
But the dynamic duo of the Lakers could not match the intensity of the Clippers bench led by Lou Williams and Montrezl Harrell who combined for 38 points, outscoring the Lakers bench by whopping 41 points.
Lebron and Davis started off well but as the game progressed they started to defer to other players and the Clippers defence trapped the duo at almost every possession.
The X factor in this game was Patrick Beverly who had 2 points but grabbed 10 rebounds as the starting point guard.
The Lakers fell to the Clippers by 10 points [112-102] as both LeBron and Davis combined scored only 2 points in the 4th quarter (Lonzo Ball scored 2 points in the 4th in his Pelicans debut).
The main concern for the Lakers is defence and turnovers (Lebron had 5 turnovers and 3 in the 4th) as KCP was guarding the 2x Finals MVP and failed miserably as Leonard scored 30 points in just 31 mins of playing time.
Even though the Clippers’ other superstar Paul George did not play tonight, the Lakers failed to take advantage of the situation.
The only positives for the Lakers were Danny Green who scored 28 points and Dwight Howard who impacted the game of the defensive end before falling into foul trouble. Let’s see how the Lakers will respond to this loss when these two teams will face each other the next time.
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