Last night, the Los Angeles Lakers got destroyed by the Portland Trail Blazers. While the Blazers won by 15 points, it seemed like much more of a blowout throughout the game. With Anthony Davis out with a stomach problem and LeBron out with abdominal issues, the Lakers struggled to put together a winning effort, and it was quite embarrassing to watch at times.
After the game, Carmelo Anthony spoke on the team’s struggles and how they just weren’t good enough. According to Clutch Points, Melo admitted that the team just isn’t playing hard and that they can’t do that against teams who are coming out of the gate hungry.
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“I think for the most part tonight we just didn’t play basketball,” Anthony said. “We did go out there and compete. We didn’t play hard. We’ve only played in spurts. Those guys came out hitting on all cylinders. It’s going to be like that. This is part of the game. We don’t know who’s going to be in there. We can’t control injuries. We can’t control what guys are going through physically. So it is next man up.”
The Lakers are now 5-5 this season, which puts them in pretty mediocre territory amongst the other teams in the Western Conference. If they don’t pick things up soon, then they could very well find themselves in a passive hole come crunch time.
[Via]