MINNEAPOLIS — The Los Angeles Lakers might only be approaching Game No. 30 of 82 on the schedule, but after Thursday night’s 118-111 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves extended their losing streak to four games, Anthony Davis called for more urgency.
“It’s the NBA season. There’s going to be ups, there’s going to be downs. Right now we’re in that down period,” Davis said after L.A. fell to 1-5 since winning the in-season tournament. “We just got to continue to fight and continue to play hard. Play with some effort, some energy and we’re treating Saturday as a must win.”
Davis said that he expects L.A. to be fully healthy for its next game Saturday, on the road against the Oklahoma City Thunder, after LeBron James (left ankle) and Gabe Vincent (left knee) both sat out in Minnesota.
It’s perhaps premature to suggest a December game is a “must win” when the postseason doesn’t begin until April. However, as shaky as the Lakers have looked the past couple of weeks — just earlier this month L.A. finished a 7-0 run and won the inaugural in-season tournament championship in Las Vegas — they showed what the team is capable of when it plays with a purpose.
L.A. looked better on Thursday in Minnesota than it did in Wednesday’s 124-108 road loss to the Chicago Bulls, with Davis (31 points, 8 rebounds, 3 blocks) leading the way and four other players scoring in double digits. But some familiar problems resurfaced.
While the Lakers managed to keep things close in the early going — trailing 36-32 heading into the second quarter after being outscored by a combined 41 points in the first quarter in their previous three losses — turnovers hurt them once again, as they committed five of their 18 overall in the fourth quarter.
“Turnovers, some iffy shots,” Davis said when asked what the difference was in the game down the stretch.
D’Angelo Russell bounced back from a season-low two points on 1-for-6 shooting in Chicago to score 17 points against his former team, but he tied Austin Reaves for the team high with four turnovers and shot just 7-for-19 overall. Still, he seemingly called for even more of the offense to run through him when asked after the game what L.A. can do to get back on track.
“I have an idea,” Russell said. “When I’m not making shots and things like that, it’s not relevant to our success. We need guys that are going to make shots. We need guys that are going to get stops. And if I’m not making shots, they’re going to depend on me just to get a stop. That’s where I work, that’s where I try to be better, but it’s not what I do. Doing that is an extra.”
A night after James pointed out that the Bulls made their run while L.A. was playing a five-man lineup it hadn’t used all season, Davis also mentioned that the team is still hoping to settle on consistent substitution patterns from coach Darvin Ham.
“It’s just a lot,” Davis said. “And we’re trying to figure it out with guys playing, not playing as far as rotations. Some games we might see Jaxson [Hayes] and [Christian] Wood. Some games we’re not. So, it’s just a lot.”
While Ham hasn’t had a fully healthy roster available to him for the first 2½ months of the season to set his rotation, he and the Lakers’ coaching staff are prioritizing deciding on a depth chart and sticking with it for the foreseeable future, sources told ESPN.
Whether or not Saturday’s game is a must win, the Lakers (15-14) are only four games behind the West’s No. 3 team, the Denver Nuggets, but only four games ahead of the West’s No. 12, the Utah Jazz.
Failing to stop the slippage soon could put L.A. in a tough position.
“We got to still buckle down and find ways to get wins,” Davis said. “So after 30 [games], I think it’s still tough to assess, but we know what we can be. We’ve shown what we can be. And we’ve shown that if we don’t do the things we need to do to be successful then we’re going to continue to be on this side of our record, which is losing.”
Dave McMenamin
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