Did the Lakers lose or did the Warriors win on opening night?
Golden State took over in the second half and cruised to victory, but how much of that was the Warriors’ dominance versus the Lakers’ follies?
After all, the Lakers had 19 turnovers, shot 25% from 3-point range and fell apart to start the third quarter
. Maybe all they needed to do to win was just take care of the basketball and shoot from deep at an average rate.After the game, head coach JJ Redick talked about the self-inflicted errors
being a key factor in the loss.
“I think [the mistakes are] mostly self-inflicted,” Redick said. “I think if you look at this game, like a microcosm of this game was we did enough good things to put ourselves in a position to win for most of the game and then when we didn’t do those things, they were self-inflicted. That’s not being organized in early offense. That’s having the wrong guy bring it up…Those are self-inflicted things, so it’s not anything Golden State did to us.”
Despite all the mistakes, with four minutes left in the game, Los Angeles was down by just six. However, at that point, the margin for error had been reduced to none and a couple of Golden State threes put LA to bed.
If they can clean up those errors, avoid so many first half turnovers and a slow start in the third, they should be in a better position to win games.
Perhaps some other self-inflicted wounds can be considered as well, such as starting Gabe Vincent and playing him to start the third quarter. Jimmy Butler hunted that matchup against Vincent and scored 10 points on him because of it.
Even though Vincent thinks targeting him is an advantage for the Lakers, the data does not support that theory.
Another self-inflicted wound can also be the laissez-faire approach the Lakers took with preseason games.
Los Angeles had only one preseason game in which all healthy rotation players participated. With Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia all being new pieces, working out the flaws and chemistry could’ve happened in those games.
Who could’ve predicted that adding new players with Luka and not testing things out in preseason would mean more mistakes once the games that count started?
All that is water under the bridge, though. The season has begun and the goal now has to be to be better today than one was yesterday. Given all the things the Lakers have to work on, that shouldn’t be a bar too difficult to reach.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
