The ‘spirited’ film session, which Los Angeles Lakers head coach Frank Vogel talked about ahead of the game against the Denver Nuggets, did not have the expected impact on his team as the purple and gold allowed their opponents to score 133 points and take a big win.
Just three players reached double-digit scoring for the Lakers, namely LeBron James (25), Russell Westbrook (19) and Dwight Howard (13). Meanwhile, Denver had seven players with 10 or more points. Jeff Green (26 points) and Bones Hyland (27) stood out the most for the winners.
After the loss, Vogel talked about what went wrong for his team. “We got to get better in terms of pushing through,” he said. “We started the game with decent energy and look Joker creates a lot of problems for our defence, for any defence, creates a lot of mismatches where you have to double team and being able to pay us every single time. Credit to him for playing a hell of a game offensively, shooting the crap out of basketball. But we got to be better.
Vogel was also asked what the Lakers need to change in their game to get better results while they are waiting for Anthony Davis to return. “We just have to get back to the drawing board and get the defense right,” he said. “We haven’t performed well enough in the last few games on that side of the ball.
“Offensively we’re not moving the way that we did for a stretch when we were playing the five out, playing through the next man as much, we’r not attacking the paint as much. The ball’s stopping too much. There are some things that we can definitely correct and we will correct. But we also got to improve on the defensive side as well.”
