The Los Angeles Lakers escaped Friday night with an ugly 101-94 victory against the Philadelphia 76ers. Despite a constant emphasis on turnovers from head coach Darvin Ham, Los Angeles coughed up the ball 21 times.
They were able to steal the win with an impressive fourth quarter and hold the 76ers to 34.4% from the field for the game. 94 points is the second-lowest total allowed by the Lakers this season.
The Lakers have allowed games like these to get away from them this season. Previously, when the offense was out of rhythm, they couldn’t rely on their defense. This is when the mistakes piled up and the Lakers ended up losing several games. But on Friday, they were finally able to focus, rely on their defense and win despite their mistakes.
This is what Ham has been preaching all season and talking about what it would look like once it finally comes together.
“Absolutely. We’re talking about putting in multiple efforts and having a new game mentality, even when things are good, bad or indifferent. A lot of things are going to happen in an NBA basketball game, the only thing that All you can do is inflict injuries on yourself and be disappointed that you didn’t get a whistle or turn the ball over.
“Like I said, there’s a difference between simple unforced errors and competitive turnovers. Some of our turnovers were competitive, guys were just trying to get the ball to an open guy and it didn’t really work. But several of them happened in a row. Then playing against the shot clock where you have to throw a hand grenade, it’s almost like a turnover too because you’re not getting a shot in rhythm.
“But again, our group buckled down, the guys were vocal on the sidelines, which was great,” Ham said. “Dialogue, we’ve been preaching it all year and it’s really been at a high level here lately. We just discuss things without imploding, we just try to understand. This frustration should be a prelude to concentration. It’s human nature to get upset and angry when you make mistakes. But we cannot wallow in this emotion, we must move forward quickly to continue to maintain ourselves and emerge victorious from a match like this.
Ham won’t forget the turnovers and still plans to point it out, but he was pleased with how the Lakers responded to get stops.
“You definitely have to take a look,” Ham said. “The good news is how we guarded and defended everything. But again, there are things to improve. Closing out the possessions with a defensive rebound, then offensively, our rhythm was good. We had some great outings, but we just couldn’t connect. Again, there is a difference between complete unforced errors and competitive turnovers. So we’re going to go to the film and show some of it and again, try to learn from it and grow and improve.
The Lakers learning to rely on their defense for the final 12 games of the season would be huge. They need to win as many final games as possible if they want to move out of 9th place in the Western Conference and make their job easier for the Play-In tournament or playoffs.
Anthony Davis encouraged by Lakers’ defensive effort
Anthony Davis explained why it is so important for the Lakers to have the opportunity to play games like Friday, where they rely on their defense in the midst of offensive struggles.
“We made it happen, no matter what was going on on the offensive end, we were able to rely on our defense,” Davis said. “They made some plays, made some shots, we turned it over 20 times tonight. They did their defensive job to turn the ball over, which they’ve been doing very well since Joel [Embiid] got hurt, but we stayed locked in defensively to continue to make stops and then let that fuel our offense.
