LOS ANGELES — Maybe, just maybe, there’s less for Laker fans to worry about than we thought.
Much has been made of the spottiness of their performances this far: A 38-25 record going into Sunday’s matinee against the New York Knicks, but with the bulk of that coming against lesser teams. Against teams playing .600 ball or better, they were 4-12.
And considering that those types of teams are the ones they would see in the playoffs, that would translate to another unsatisfying springtime among the followers of Laker Exceptionalism.
So was Sunday a statement?
The Lakers out-physicaled the more physical team – I’m not totally sure that’s a legitimate word, but it fits here. They took charges, held their own from a rebounding standpoint, kept bouncing up from the floor after taking blows from Knicks players and delivered a few blows of their own.
Yeah, the flashy team from the West outgritted the brutes from the East, 110-97, leading by 23 at one point early in the fourth quarter before the visitors made a 12-2 run to cut the lead to 13, 99-86 with 8:17 left.
The Knicks got within 10, but that was it. And make no mistake, this was a victory over a good team. New York is 41-24, 5½ games behind Detroit in the Eastern Conference and 2½ behind second place Boston. They’d just come off a 142-103 victory at Denver Friday night, one night after the Nuggets had subdued the Lakers 120-113.
“The comments I made to my coaching staff (weere) just they were more physical than Denver,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “Which is saying a lot because you know Denver is a physical team – (Aaron) Gordon’s back in the lineup, (Nikola) Jokic is out there. I thought they (the Knicks) were the more physical team, and tonight we were the more physical.”
Admit it: You don’t ever think of scrappiness when you think of the Lakers. You think of star power. Consider, though, that they pulled this off with LeBron James on the bench, held out for the second straight game with what was listed on the injury report as “Left Elbow Contusion & Left Foot Arthritis.” The former, James, suffered in that Denver game Thursday night.
The box score will note that Luka Doncic finished with 35 points, eight rebounds and four assists, with two 29-foot 3-pointers and what was described in the official play-by-play as a 28-foot fadeaway.
It will also note that Austin Reaves had 25 points on 8-for-16 shooting, along with four rebounds, five assists, a steal and a block, and it is noteworthy that with James unavailable, Reaves took the initiative from the start, drawing a foul on a 3-point attempt on the first possession and draining a 3-pointer on the second, off a pass from Doncic.
“Obviously, he needs to be aggressive like this,” Doncic said. But just playing with him is so easy because he draws so much attention, helps others too, so just playing with him, it makes my life easy.”
Hidden in plain sight among those numbers, Marcus Smart was 1 for 10 from the field, finished with five points but four assists and two steals and was a game-high plus 27. Sometimes that stat is deceptive. Sometimes it’s illustrative, and this might be the latter.
“Really, really impactful game from him,” Redick said. “I think back to the end of the third quarter, we’ve got a comfortable lead, but he saves two points when we turn the ball over at the end of the quarter by forcing (Jordan) Clarkson to pass it.”
Was this a statement game? Is it an indicator that the Lakers, who Redick noted have won 15 of their last 24 and are top 10 in the league in offense and top 15 in defense, are about to make a run over their final 18 regular season games?
Or will it turn out to have been a mirage? The Lakers have home games against Minnesota, a game ahead of them in fourth place in the West, on Tuesday and a rematch at home against Denver, tied with them for fifth, on Saturday. Maybe we’ll have a better sense by then, or maybe not.
The circumstances Sunday, while not unusual given NBA scheduling, may have made the Lakers’ defensive mindset necessary. Denver is a tough place to play anyway because of altitude, which can have an effect on an athlete even after getting back to sea level, and Redick also cited the distance from downtown, where the Lakers stay, to Denver International Airport, located 23 miles away. It’s not a big factor, necessarily, but it’s not convenient.
More specific, Sunday brought with it (a) the 12:30 start for ABC, and (b) an hour’s less sleep because of the change to Daylight Savings Time. Unless everybody on both rosters went to bed Saturday at 8 p.m. – fat chance, right? – this was not going to be the most efficient game ever played. Stopping people from scoring would be more important than depending on their firepower, though the Lakers did make 15 of 44 3-pointers (to the Knicks’ 8 of 34).
“Have fun,” Reaves said when asked what his approach was Sunday. “Woke up, early game, was tired when I got here and just told myself to have fun. I don’t feel like I played bad. I haven’t made a lot of shots, and I feel like I’ve done a lot other things well.”
Standing in there and letting an offensive player run you over isn’t glamorous. But the Lakers drew three offensive fouls Sunday, one on a play originally called a foul on Smart but overturned because Smart was (a) in the lane but outside the restricted area and (b) not moving when OG Anunoby ran over him.
Those take-one-for-the-team moments had the Lakers’ reserves up and hollering.
“That’s a sacrificial play,” Redick said. “I mean, you’ve got to put your body on the line … Our guys have been motivated to do that all year. You know, we’ve been really good with charges. And for a lot of guys, I think of (Reaves), Smart, they’re not coming over to block shots on Karl Anthony Towns, right? That’s your job as the low man. You can do verticality, you can block a shot, or you can take a charge.”
And it takes a lot of want-to to be willing to stand in there with an offensive player barreling down on you.
“It just shows your commitment to winning basketball,” Reaves said. “And I feel like everybody in this locker room that will do that, maybe some more than others. But when it comes down to it, I feel like with high confidence that if we need it, someone will stand in there and take a charge.
“Unless it’s me against Zion (Williamson),” he added.
Reaves is 6-foot-5, 210. Williamson, the New Orleans Hornets’ power forward, is 6-6 and 284 pounds. There’s a willingness to sacrifice, and then there’s a willingness not to get crushed by the NBA equivalent of a big rig.
jalexander@scng.com