LOS ANGELES — Hate to be cliché, but the Lakers actually wanted it more.
Don’t know if you could have scripted a game better to illustrate that state of L.A.’s NBA teams in this moment in time than the Lakers’ 106-102 victory over the Clippers on Friday.
More than five years after the Clippers peppered Southern California with billboards touting a “Street Lights Over Spotlights” marketing campaign, these Lakers are out here hooping under spotlights and streetlights. Two of the biggest basketball stars in the world on the court together and their team – down two starters on the second night of a back-to-back, and led, of course, by a phenomenal 40-year-old – was playing like a scrappy little engine with something to prove.
On the other side, tail lights. Like the Clippers were stuck in traffic on the 405 Freeway with their fans en route to Intuit Dome in Inglewood on a weekday evening.
The Clippers, at nearly full strength, headed back downtown Friday, returning to Crytpo.com Arena for the first time since moving to Intuit Dome. Punched the clock on Game 59, put in an uninspired and not-especially-focused night’s work and clocked out again a few hours later with their fourth L in five games. It’s a mini-slide that has them precipitously close to play-in tournament territory.
It’ll help when they get Norman Powell and his 24.2 points per game back from the patellar injury that’s kept him out of these past five games, for sure. But what they really need back is the intensity and tenacity that they showed earlier in the season before Kawhi Leonard returned from injury, when they were holding down the fort with heart and hustle and by holding opponents to just 108 points per game – the type of energy the Lakers brought in February, when they limited opposing teams to 107.3 points per game.
I don’t know that these Clippers have it in them.
They used to be able to count on Terance Mann to bring that sort of heat – especially in his matchups with Luka Doncic – but the Clippers benched him and then traded him. Center Ivica Zubac plays with consistent effort, but the Clippers can’t seem to feed him enough. And Kris Dunn is doing his thing defensively, but that matters little when Leonard is laboring to get to his spots in a way that the guys he’s guarding are not.
The Lakers were laboring too Friday, and loving it. Showtime, but the curtain went up on a bunch of workers who spent an evening defending and diving, getting on the ground, fighting for loose balls, sneaking in to steal inbounds passes, and then skipping and celebrating, letting loose a primal scream or two. High fives for everyone.
Doncic and James led the way statistically, naturally, combining for 59 points, 15 rebounds and eight assists.
But it was the grit of the group that got them past the Clippers (for the fifth time in seven meetings, if you’re keeping track).
That combination – two superstars who can bend a game to their will with skill, complemented by a cast capable of willing an outcome with pure effort – is potent.
And special.
Because there’s never a guarantee that a new star will align with a new cast; you can’t just slot people in place and expect they’ll automatically sync up and produce the results you want.
Ask the Clippers. Six years ago, they added Leonard and Paul George to what had been an overachieving group that had more than enough spunk but not enough top-end talent to make a run at the franchise’s first title. Seemed, at the time, like a perfect formula. But the transition was far from seamless and inevitably fruitless, too.
These Lakers made a huge swing trading for Doncic, and now they’re figuring out, on the fly, how best to incorporate his talents – and Doncic told us, on his 26th birthday, there’s “a long way to go, but slowly, I’m starting to feel like myself.”
In the meantime, they’re covering up their growing pains by playing hard, so even when they’re enlisting the service of a quintet that’s never played together before – James, Trey Jemison III, Jarred Vanderbilt, Gabe Vincent and Jordan Goodwin – they’re finding a spark.
Assistant coach Greg St. Jean’s instructions to that unit, which was called on late in the first quarter: “Let’s turn up the defense. That’s gonna lead to transition. Let’s crash.”
The Lakers were down 21-13 when those guys checked in. When the quarter ended, they trailed just 25-24.
“That group,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said, “was awesome, and that energy is contagious.”
And it’s probably making much of the league sick, the idea that the Lakers could be clicking on so many cylinders, going 10-2 in February, without even nearing top speed yet.
That of course Luka and LeBron, two of the world’s true basketball savants, would be in tune out there. And that they’d be conducting a pack of attack dogs who – credit the salesmanship and teaching of their first-year coach – are all engaged and fighting for the same thing? Music to all the Lakers fans in L.A., anyway.
After the victory, James – the current Face Of The League – talked on ESPN about wanting people to appreciate the artistry of basketball: “This is the best most beautiful game in the world. When you watch basketball, you’re basically listening to music. You’re listening to jazz music, R&B music, rap music, heavy metal music … It’s a beautiful game.”
Go ahead and stick Friday’s gutsy rock fight of a win in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Originally Published:
