Missing LeBron James and Anthony Davis the Lakers fell short against the 76ers at Crypto.com Arena (121-126). Despite the loss, Lakers head coach Frank Vogel was pleased with his team’s effort.
Los Angeles lost the second quarter by 12 points but apart from that the game was pretty close. It was different compared to recent games where the purple and gold allowed their opponents to build big leads.
Stanley Johnson, who played team-high 35 minutes and scored 13 points, grabbed 5 rebounds and dished 8 assists, was asked after the game about a previous game against the Raptors in which Los Angeles went down by 21 points to start the game.
“We’re grown men and we’re professionals so at then of the day that’s not acceptable,” the 25-year-old power forward said after the Philadelphia game. “There’s no team on the planet that should be blowing us out especially in the first four minutes of the game, five minutes of the game.
“When it gets egregious or when it gets that you have to look at yourself, it ain’t nobody else. Man to man we looked at ourselves and we’re going to change it. And then we had that game, we played better than that game I think since that point in time we’ve changed it.
“And that’s kind of what you have to do as men we have to change it. Nobody’s going to play as softer. We have a great game plan, we have great coaches. So we had to change and I think the effort level, just the attention to detail. Not saying that weren’t doing it before, I just think we’re executing at a higher rate than we were before.
“Especially in the league it’s marginal. It’s like two or four times can help you erase a 10-point lead or a 10-point gap in points. And that’s kind of what it is. It’s like two possessions and then it blow up into a … because people make threes at this point and one, the people are so athletic. If you give a couple possessions, those things can stream together and you’re down 15 before you even know it.”
