With the Lakers entering Atlanta as one of the hottest teams in the NBA and the Hawks having Trae Young, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Jalen Johnson, Luke Kennard and Kristaps Porzingis all out, it was easy to assume this game would be an LA win.
It seems the Lakers felt the same and played accordingly.
From the start, focus, energy and attention to detail were all absent. Los Angeles gave minimal effort while Atlanta played inspired basketball. They jumped out to an early lead and carried it throughout
en route to a 122-102 win over the Lakers.
Losing a winnable game is disappointing, but playing that nonchalantly the entire time is unacceptable. Even after halftime, Atlanta came out with far more energy, forcing turnover after turnover and putting the Lakers to bed early.
After the horrendous result, Deandre Ayton stated the obvious: the Lakers underestimated their opponent.
“I don’t know, really, probably leaving those guys underestimated, not keeping those guys to account, forgetting about this is the NBA and those are NBA players,” Ayton said of what went wrong. “They deflated us a little bit, too, with their shot making. Seeing the scouting report from clips they’ve had in their previous games, that film was not showing the guys out there and that’s how the NBA is.
“It’s always one of those nights where you just have to lock in and dial in and I just feel we were behind the ball a little bit. They killed us in transition and they played amazing defense and we weren’t ready for it. JJ got on us about it and we’re ready for the next game.”
Never underestimating your opponent is one of the oldest sayings in sports. Sure, the Lakers had more talent on the court compared to the Hawks, but if you don’t put it to good use, you can get burned pretty easily in one game.
What made this result particularly disappointing is that playing hard regardless of who is on the court has been a part of this team’s identity. Thanks to that level of fight, the Lakers beat the Blazers without LeBron, Luka Dončić, or Austin Reaves.
Knowing the Lakers have been on the other side of these kinds of games and didn’t take care of business on Saturday made this result even more frustrating.
“That’s why it’s kind of like a hard pill to swallow, for real,” Ayton said. “When we know what we’re coming up against and seeing the way they played – and they played phenomenal – but us not even damn near competing, in a sense. It looks bad on paper and it looks bad on film. This is one of those games where the food’s going to taste bad tonight. But this is the NBA. We’ve got 82 games. Next game up.”
There are very few silver linings in a stinker like this, but one is that the entire team is aware this is unacceptable. Ayton is saying as much with his comments and head coach JJ Redick didn’t talk much postgame, but the words he did use made it clear this isn’t okay.
They’ll have a chance to back up these words with a better game against the Hornets on Monday. Though it would’ve been ideal if they had just taken the Hawks game seriously to begin with.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
