Lakers’ lack of open looks is ‘demoralizing’

The Los Angeles Lakers lost 131-114 at the hands of the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday night in a game that was never very close. The Lakers tried to hang on despite missing Anthony Davis, Rui Hachimura, Chirstian Wood and Jarred Vanderbilt, but it was always going to be an uphill battle against a motivated Grizzlies team.

Without Davis, the Lakers defense obviously struggled. But it wasn’t much better on the offensive end, as the Lakers shot 44.1% from the field and 31.3% from beyond the arc. Outside of LeBron James, no one could get going. The Lakers outside of LeBron went 9-for-37 from 3-point range and 26-for-69 from the field.

Many of these misses were not necessarily well contested either. The Grizzlies didn’t play elite defense, causing the Lakers to struggle. It was more self-inflicted wounds on that end of the floor. And James talked about the feeling that gives LA

“Obviously when you get good looks and they don’t go down, I think at times it can be demoralizing for us as a group and for individuals. But guys kept shooting when they were open. We just not made it work from the outside as a collective group.”

Overall, the Lakers appear far more vulnerable than they did after a 3-0 start to the season. They completed their first road trip of the season 1-4 and are now back to .500 on the year. James tried to explain why it could have happened that way.

“Obviously there are more games for our teams to scout us,” James said. “When it was game one, they didn’t know what we were doing. Teams have had an opportunity to see what we’re doing and try to take things away. So when you have two starters out, you try to take even more things away and have some of the other guys try to beat us.

“We’re still executing, but it doesn’t look like it when the shots aren’t going in. We had great execution tonight where the shots literally didn’t fall. We executed to a T and they didn’t fall. But the execution offensively, I was proud of. We have to compete and we have to defend. We gave up 50% shooting and they shot the 3-ball well, they got offensive rebounds, second-chance points and transition points as well. So it wasn’t too much about our offense, even though we didn’t shoot the ball well, but defensively we have to hang our hat on it as well. We didn’t shoot the ball well either couple of the previous games, but we defended at a high level.”

The Lakers weren’t considered an elite team when the season began, but Wednesday night was still uncharacteristic, and it’s hard to win games with those kinds of numbers. The assumption is that things will turn around for LA naturally, especially when they get healthy.

Yes Morant doesn’t like the Lakers

Perhaps the most motivated person on the floor on Wednesday was Ja Morant. The Grizzlies star had several moments on the court with LeBron James showing how fired up he was to get a chance to win against the Lakers.

However, Morant’s problems run deeper than just LeBron, as he has developed a dislike for the franchise with their wins against him over the past two seasons.

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