Coming off a game in which they trailed by 25 at halftime but stormed all the way back to win, the Lakers couldn’t replicate those efforts against a hot-shooting Clippers team, falling 133-115 to their Crypto.com Arena co-tenants.
As the old saying goes, “it’s a make or miss league”, but for most of the night it felt like the Clippers only knew the first part of that equation. The Clippers put the Lakers on their heels quickly, jumping out to a 9-0 lead on 4-4 shooting, triggering a Lakers’ timeout in an attempt to slow halt their momentum.
The hot shooting only continued, however, as the Clippers finished the first quarter with 37 points on 13-24 from the field, including a scalding hot 7-12 from behind the arc. The Lakers, to their credit, hung tough by regrouping after that first timeout to find their own rhythm offensively, putting up 30 points of their own on 11-23 shooting while hitting three triples to try to keep pace.
The Clippers, however, only continued to scorch the nets in the 2nd quarter, scoring 40 more points while hitting 14 of their 18 shots from the field, including an incredible 8-10 shooting from deep. Unfortunately for the Lakers, they couldn’t keep pace that period, managing just 24 points of their own on sub-30% shooting from the field.
Much like in Sunday’s win over the Blazers, the Lakers tried to make their push in the 2nd half and did well to shave points off the Clippers’ lead in the 3rd quarter. LeBron led the way all night, and particularly in this stretch, scoring 13 of his game high 46 points in the 3rd quarter. The Lakers were able to build some momentum and trim their deficit to 16, and with some energy on their side looked poised to make one last push.
And push they did. Once again led by LeBron — who added 15 more points in the 4th quarter on an array of long jumpers and powerful finishes in the paint — the Lakers cut their deficit to 10 points, and looked poised to continue their run by riding the cresting wave of the crowd into another crunch time affair where anything could happen.
However, it was not meant to be on this night. Back-to-back turnovers from Russell Westbrook — one on an errant inbounds pass, one on a mishandled dribble drive — led to an 8-0 run featuring timely buckets by Kawhi Leonard (25 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists) and Norman Powell (22 points, 4 rebounds, 4 assists, 4 made three pointers) that dashed the last of the Lakers hopes and put the game away for good.
Ultimately, this was a game where the brilliance of LeBron just was not enough to stave off a Clippers team that finished the night making 19 of their 38 attempts from behind the arc and got double-digit scoring nights from five players.
The Lakers will look to bounce back on Wednesday night when they face the Spurs for the final time this regular season on the second night of a back-to-back.
