Alright welcome in to the full recap of the Lakers' game vs. the Denver Nuggets where the Lakers put up a good fight in their return home from the 4-game Grammy road trip, but the effort just wasn't enough as the Lakers fell to the Nuggets 106-96.
Very uninspiring game to watch on national TV with both teams having long losing streaks, but the Nuggets just snapped that just now. With the way the Lakers started and lead, it could be safe to assume that they got this in the bag, but this is not 2008-2011, no Laker lead is safe anymore. As usual, the lack of talent, lack of consistency, and insurmountable injuries are playing a factor, so no surprise that the Lakers would clamp down the stretch, especially when they don't have anyone on the floor who has experience in leading a team to victory in crunch time.
The Positives
Carlos Boozer, 21 points, 10 rebounds, 8-15 shooting. Nowadays, Boozer is the one leading all scorers and putting up consistent number off the bench. He may have started slow this game, as he was struggling to get a shot up, but he came through in the 2nd half in vain. Instead of settling for jump shots, Boozer was getting to the basket, making layups look easy. He faked out J.J. Hickson big time in one play for the easy deuce although it was clearly obvious Hickson thought there was help defensively. Booze played his heart out tonight, hustling and scoring off the bench.
Wayne Ellington, 18 points, 8-13 shooting. He started out near perfect, missed a couple of shots to lower his percentage, but I thought Ellington played a clean game out there. To describe it, he was more patient with his shot selection and eluding defenders to get a cleaner look at the basket. Like I said in the halftime post, he showed more fundamentals and by doing so, he made high percentage shots. So kudos to Ellington for improving his game tonight. Hopefully, we can see that on a day-to-day basis.
The Negatives
Turnovers. The Lakers barely turned the ball over in the first half. In the second half, it was a whole different story. As bad as the Lakers are right now, those killers turnovers have been seen a lot and this game was just another example of imploding when the team is just about to rally. Lin accounted for half those turnovers with 5 of the Lakers' 10 and some of that resulted from either dribbling too much or trying to make a desperate pass.
Nick Young, 12 points, 4-12 shooting. Will the real Swaggy P please stand up? He'll score double figures, but the numbers are not going to be that impressive with the way he is shooting as of late. Of course he had the highlight 4 point play, but other than that, nothing from him all game long. The bench is good, but the bench is much better when he is scoring at will and at some point, he has to have one of those games. He's the 2nd option in scoring besides Kobe right? Then, he's gotta live up to that.
Conclusion
Overall, it's the game pattern. Lakers make it competitive, but when the player on the opposing team scores 30 or more, the game is loss and in this case, they got burned by Ty Lawson big time. As a Laker fan, I'm not surprise because he has given headache performances like that in the past. Lakers lose again, water is wet, simply put, it is what it is. The Lakers go on the road again tomorrow to take on the Trail Blazers, so expect a quick recap for that considering it's not nationally televised. I'll see you guys after the All-Star break.
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