The Los Angeles Lakers began life without LeBron James, who’s expected to miss at least one to two weeks with a strained groin, on Monday with a 111-108 road loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
Luka Dončić finished with 22 points, 12 assists and 12 rebounds, his second triple-double since joining the Lakers, but without James on the floor the Nets threw everything at Dončić defensively and the Lakers weren’t able to make them pay.
It’s not a terribly surprising development given the circumstances. These superstars that get blitzed by defenses all the time can only do so much if the other guys aren’t taking advantage of the overloaded defense by making the 4-on-3 plays on the backside.
That takes timing and rhythm, the old cliche of everyone being on the same page, which is easier said than done for a team like the Lakers that has added such a dominant piece like Dončić and is throwing out a lot of lineups that haven’t played a ton of time together.
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Now, when you have two players as intelligent and skilled as Dončić and James on the court, especially together, you can cover up for a lot of these “getting to know one another” kinks that typically take time to work out.
But without James — to say nothing of his own production — the subtlest of connections that keep an NBA offense flowing become a lot more difficult to execute on the fly with a starting lineup (Dončić with Austin Reaves, Dalton Knecht, Gabe Vincent and Alex Len) that, prior to Monday night, hadn’t played a single minute together, per Cleaning the Glass.
It wasn’t just James that was out, either. It was Dorian Finney-Smith and Rui Hachimura, too. And just when Jaxson Hayes was starting to really settle in as the exact kind of short-roll…
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