LOS ANGELES — After the Lakers beat the Clippers 125-122 to begin the second half of their season, ESPN’s Charles Barkley dismissed the victory. The 48 minutes he just watched weren’t going to change his mind that the Lakers weren’t in the tier of Western Conference teams that could credibly challenge for a title.
They, like the Clippers, “aren’t any good,” Barkley said before saying the Lakers wouldn’t beat Denver, Houston, Oklahoma City, San Antonio or Minnesota in a playoff series.
And as he finished dismissing the Lakers’ postseason chances, Inside the NBA instantly threw it to an interview with Austin Reaves — who was listening on a headset to the segment.
“Everybody’s entitled to their own opinion,” Reaves said with a half smirk.
He, like everyone in or around the Lakers organization on a regular basis, knows that a three-point win against the Clippers in late February wasn’t going to determine whether the Lakers are “contenders” or not.
The game was just the 11th time Reaves, LeBron James and Luka Dončić were able to play together this season. It was the first time JJ Redick used a starting lineup with those three, Deandre Ayton and Marcus Smart.
And it was a game where the Lakers played 12 minutes of near-perfect basketball to start, the Lakers making 84.2 percent of their shots against the high-energy Clippers. Barkley, of course, might end up being correct about the Lakers. But if he’s wrong, the ease in which they created shots and the hell they put a defense through trying to alternate stopping Dončić, James and Reaves will probably be why.
“You know, we made some shots, but I thought the extra passes and the execution and the way we got to spacing and early offense and just sharing the basketball, and it was, you know, clutter-free, ego-free,” Redick said. “We just, we just played.”
According to StatMuse, the 84.2 percent field-goal percentage was the best shooting quarter for any team in any quarter this season (besting the Lakers’ 83.3 percent first quarter against the Brooklyn Nets).
Dončić finished with 38 points and 11 assists. Reaves scored 29 and James had 13 and 11 assists — his fifth-straight game with at least 10 assists.
The quarter even began with the Lakers perfectly executing a play that created an open layup that Dončić uncharacteristically missed.
“In the first quarter we were playing good defense and then we got out, played with a lot of pace, created some different looks,” Dončić said. “And I think that’s how we should play.”
Luka Dončić finished with 38 points and 11 assists against the Clippers. (Kirby Lee / Imagn Images)
With the Lakers at full strength, Reaves was able to sprint into open driving lanes. James was able to bully favorable matchups. And Dončić was able to be more surgical is picking when to attack.
The energy flowed throughout the team. Ayton set better screens and ran the floor with more purpose, catching a lob from James for a play he called “one of the highlights of my career.” Marcus Smart, who didn’t take a shot in the first three quarters, ably stepped into an open corner three in the fourth for the first of his seven points down the stretch.
It wasn’t perfect, the Lakers one-time 16-point lead evaporating into a two-point deficit. Kawhi Leonard, like he has for much of the season, looked like the best player on the court at times, the ball popping between his hands as he got to his spots and bodied his way into open shots.
And the Clippers, like they have every time they’ve sent talent out the door in trades, continued to play with toughness, energy and confidence — embodied this time by Bennedict Mathurin who followed up his 38 points against the Nuggets Thursday with 26 off the bench Friday.
Friday’s win against the Clippers was technically against a team that’s below .500. But they’d won four of six since the deadline with wins against the Nuggets, Rockets and Timberwolves during that stretch.
The Clippers tested the Lakers and one of their biggest weaknesses Friday, applying relentless pressure and playing with consistent energy. Pregame, Redick was asked what the Lakers needed to do to get the most out of their potential.
“Just a consistent level of effort and execution,” he said.
Friday, he got that.
The best version of the Lakers has barely been visible 55 games into their season. On one hand, that could prove Barkley’s point — that the Lakers aren’t serious enough to be taken seriously, that maybe they could win four games in the playoffs but almost certainly not eight and definitely not more than that.
The hope, though, over these next two months is that Redick and his staff and the players can embrace the things they are good at — and if they’re healthy and playing together, they can look impossible to guard — while being good enough at the things they struggle with.
Will it be good enough? Maybe not. But the Lakers want to at least see it first.
“You can’t ask a left-handed pitcher to throw righty,” Redick said. “So it’s really about doubling down on the things and the trends that we saw that are working and getting better at those and that’s, to me … how you maximize a group.”
The maximized Lakers might not be good enough to win it all. But anyone claiming to know what the maximized Lakers are and aren’t is still just guessing.