(Eagle News) — After losing to the more veteran San Antonio Spurs on Friday night, the young Los Angeles Lakers team still maintained their optimism that they will beat the Chicago Bulls on Sunday, November 20. (Monday Philippine time)
The LA Lakers fought hard but still it wasn’t enough to overcome the San Antonio Spurs, as they played without injured leading scorer D’Angelo Russell for the first time. But they did not feel discouraged even when they fell behind the Spurs.
Russell sat out Friday’s game with a sore knee. LA Lakers’ head coach Luke Walton then chose to start with guard Jose Calderon in his absence.
But even with their leading scorer sidelined, they still managed to scrap with the San Antonio Spurs whose lineup relatively had much more experience.
It was also the LA Lakers’ first matchup against the San Antonio Spurs since the retirement of both Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan. Bryant of LA Lakers played his last game in April, as he decided to end his 20-year basketball career, while Duncan played his last game in July this year after 19 seasons of playing for the Spurs.
“I was proud of the way we fought, but it wasn’t consistent enough. They make you pay for your mistakes,” Walton said of the Spurs. “The most important thing to take away is how we come back from this and how we approach practice tomorrow.”
The Lakers managed to keep within four points with 54 seconds left. They also got more than 20 points a piece from Jordan Clarkson, Lou Williams and Nick Young it just wasn’t enough to overcome the Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard, LaMarcus Aldridge and Pau Gasol.
Williams scored 24 points on 9-of-12 shooting and Nick Young hit four 3-pointers. While those two both reached their season-highs and Jordan Clarkson added 20 points, this did not overcome the Spurs’ offense which kept on coming.
“We ain’t okay with any loss, we came here to compete and win,” Clarkson said. “It just shows, how much we’ve grown as a team… We are here, we’re trying to win a game.”
Clarkson said the Spurs was a tough team to compete against.
“But we’re right there. We came back,” Clarkson said as he voiced optimism that they’d win the next time they face Spurs.
With the game with Chicago Bulls as their next, he said they just need to “get focused.”
“We can’t let this snowball,” said the Filipino-American Lakers’ pointguard.
Thus, even with the loss, what Lakers’ coach Walton said recently to his players still rang true: “Never let winning make you soft… Never let losing make you quit. Never let your teammates down in any situation.” (with a report from Kenneth Cruz, EBC Los Angeles correspondent)
