Final Score: SA 91 LAL 85 [L]
Alright, welcome in to an impromptu full recap between the Lakers and the Spurs where the Spurs mustered enough offense at stops to hand the Lakers' their 2nd straight loss in the young 2013-14 season. Luckily for me, I was able to catch the whole 2nd half because I finished my programming exercises early during my lab and drove home as quickly as I can to catch enough time to maybe do an impromptu, but not formal full recap. Also I was able to be home on time to catch the halftime report and maybe I'll use some of what ESPN's analysts say as I do this recap. So this is all gonna be from improv, but luckily I caught the 2nd half.
Let's start out with positives: it's always gonna be a given that Pau Gasol is gonna be a positive, unless he really has an off night. Gasol was basically the only starter in double figures scoring 20 points and 11 rebounds, he had a decent shooting night 8-17 from the field, able to manage to hit one from the beyond 3 point line. It's no secret that we have to feed him the ball inside the low post, but most of his shots this game were from the perimeter and it's an exception, but really where he thrives is in the low post area, give him the ball down there his field goal percentage would be much better than tonight. Jodie Meeks off the bench is another positive, 14 points and 6 rebounds, mostly his game is being a spot up shooter and that's why he's so one-dimensional, but this game he was actually attacking the basket and drawing defenses and making that extra pass. It's good to see that Meeks has a motive of driving to the hoop, scoring when open, and making that extra pass rather than just living and dying behind the three. Wesley Johnson was another positive, had one of his better shooting nights, scoring 12 points on 5-11 shooting.
Onto the negatives, I guess you can say just the overall shot selection. Since I'm reading from the Yahoo Sports stat sheet, the Lakers shot 30-82 from the field and 8-27 from beyond the arc. Really just a pathetic shooting night for the Lakers, especially against an underrated defensive team like the San Antonio Spurs. It's also pretty interesting that the players we brought in were designed to thrive in Mike D'Antoni's run and gun, 7 seconds or less offense, but we just couldn't buy a bucket from the outside and basically just shot ourselves out of the game. Like I said, I understand that some players have off nights, but this game was just totally unacceptable considering this team shot 36% from the field as a whole.
Overall, piss poor shooting game tonight for the Lakers and they gotta rekindle that competitive heart that they had against the Clippers on opening night. Next game is against Atlanta and in my opinion, it should be a pretty favorable game for the Lakers. Again no Q-by-Q, halftime posts, or full recaps for League Pass games. I'll see you guys on November 7 for the Lakers' first game against the Rockets since Dwight Howard left LA for Houston. Again, for Laker Nation who are also part of the Raider Nation, I'll see you guys on Sunday when the Raiders take on the Philadelphia Eagles.
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