Godzilla Still Marching Down Main Street (as NBA Media/Markets Stare at Their Phones)

“Lakers with Luka” Win AGAIN…Fast Start…Disruptive Defense…Halfcourt Grinding

It wasn’t exactly a replay of recent Los Angeles Lakers games, when LeBron James, Luka Doncic and company beat the LA Clippers for the second time in three days Sunday night. Instead of LeBron stomping…it was Luka breathing fire.

Luka’s Sizzling Sunday

5/12 on three-pointers (best as a Laker)

4/5 on two-pointers

29 points with only 17 field goal attempts (also made 6 FTS)

29 points in 37 minutes (finding his wind!)

9 assists

6 defensive rebounds as a nice bonus

That WAS different from recent Lakers’ victories…and an important difference moving forward. The Luka Era had already started impressively even though he wasn’t playing all that great. Everyone else was doing a solid job of emphasizing their strengths within a team concept that emphasized halfcourt basketball and defense. Sunday night, the Lakers may have shown signs that they can play even better.

Remember that the Clippers had short turnaround revenge against a city rival. Betting markets made LAC a two-point favorite on the Lakers home floor because of that important intangible. Well, that and Austin Reaves being out with an injury for LAL. The Lakers had already won the tough one! Playing in a back-to-back spot in the opener the night after grinding with Minnesota. This was a game the Clippers were supposed to win. Nobody would have blinked an eye if this little two-game series had been a gentleman’s split.

Godzilla said the Japanese equivalent of “I ain’t no gentleman!” on the way to…

*A 34-28 lead after 1Q (fast starts a standard of late for LAL)

*A 56-43 lead at halftime

*A final score that saw its opponent stay below the market team total by 10 points (that general range also fairly standard of late)

I’ll update a few of the lists we’ve been monitoring in a moment. First, the basics…

(If you’re a first-time reader, our stat summaries separate the often-random three-point performances from “everything else.” A shortcut stat we developed for “everything else” is “Trey-less Efficiency,” which is points scored on 1’s and 2’s divided by the number of possessions that DON’T end with a made trey. Numbers at .85 or better are good, at .75 or worse are not.)

*LA Lakers (+2) 108 LA Clippers 102

What happened with Treys?

Lakers 18/42 (43%), Clippers 12/39 (31%)

Big edge here for the Lakers, which is something important that breaks recent form. Most of their recent edges had been inside the arc, partly (more than partly) because Luka had been missing too many treys. He made five tonight, and the team made 18. Since the All-Star break, that’s 15-9-16-11-11-11-18 for the Lakers. Probably an outlier. But, the Lakers become very important very quickly if they can sustain something around 15 because Luka’s able to sustain something around 4-5.

All that said…if the Lakers won treys by 18 points, that means they lost everything else by 12 points. LeBron had a poor outing. Reaves wasn’t there to help with scoring. We need to at least be aware that this wasn’t a great game inside the arc for the Lakers. It’s possible that’s a red flag for how dicey things might get in the playoffs if LeBron starts showing his age.