Anthony Davis scored 32 points (on 13/23 shooting), grabbed 11 rebounds, and blocked four shots in the LeBron James-less Los Angeles Lakers’ 104-128 loss against the Denver Nuggets on Sunday night at Staples Center. The Lakers fell to a 24-6 record but still sit atop the Western Conference. After the game, Davis talked on their third loss in a row:
“With or without (James), we sucked defensively. We lost our defensive edge. We’re not guarding no more. We’re not rebounding. Getting back cut. Our attention to detail on the defensive end and awareness has slipped the last couple games, and we’re not aggressive on that end anymore. That goes back to, even, back to the road trip. We were winning games, but we had a lot of slippage on the defensive end. We got to be able to correct that.
We haven’t been guarding. That’s everybody, even myself. A lot of blow-bys. Just been lackadaisical on the defensive end. We’re very talented on the offensive end, but the way we’re going to win games is defensively. We can’t bank on outscoring everyone. We got to continue to defend, and once we get the edge back, we’ll be fine.
We never expected to lose three in a row. We didn’t expect to lose two in a row. But … it’s not going to get any easier. We got a tough one coming up in two days, so we got to get back to the gym and work on our defense, and make sure we’ll be ready to go on Christmas Day,” Davis said, per Dave McMenamin of ESPN.
