FACTS: 90% of the NBA players have called LeBron James as the GREATEST OF ALL-TIME #LeBronClearsYourGOAT pic.twitter.com/rmaRN3bL4P— 𝔸𝕝𝕝𝕒𝕙𝕦𝔸𝕜𝕓𝕣𝕠𝕟 (@YourGOATisBron) March 25, 2026

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

Even with the win streak snapped, Luka Dončić’s surge and LeBron James’s evolution have L.A. looking like a real title threat.
The Lakers lost a basketball game in Detroit on Monday.

Lately, that alone amounts to breaking news.

Final score in Motown: Pistons 113, Lakers 110 in a game that was exactly this close. L.A. led by four at the end of the first quarter. After a stinker of a second, it trailed by 13 at the half. After three quarters it cut the deficit to two. A back-and-forth fourth ended with a game-tying Luka Dončić 33-footer coming up short.

“Give a lot of credit to them,” LeBron James said. “We gave ourselves a chance.”

Monday’s loss was the Lakers’ first since March 5. It was just L.A.’s second this month. During the Lakers’ nine-game winning streak they ranked second in offensive efficiency, 10th in defensive efficiency and sixth in net rating.

Said coach JJ Redick, “We’re a good basketball team.”

Indeed, led by a great player. Dončić has been on a tear the last month. During the winning streak Dončić averaged an NBA-best 40 points per game. He shot 49% from the floor. He connected on 40% from three. He scored 60 points in a win over the Heat on Friday. Great, on its own. Astounding when you consider that the team reportedly checked into its Miami hotel around 5 a.m. the day of the game and needed every one of Dončić’s 60 to beat back the Heat.

“The shotmaking,” said Redick after the game, “was unreal.”

With three weeks to go in the regular season, Dončić has muscled his way into the MVP debate. These aren’t empty numbers. He scored 35 in a win over the Knicks. He totaled 76 in back-to-back road wins over the Rockets. He wasn’t efficient in Monday’s loss to Detroit, but he still racked up 32.

“I couldn’t see a reason why he’s not [in the MVP discussion],” Austin Reaves said last week. “I don’t think what I say is going to matter, but he definitely should be in that conversation.”

Said Redick, “It’s a special run that he’s on.”

James has had special runs. Lots of them. He’s a 22-time All-Star, a four-time MVP and, oh yeah, a four-time NBA champion. What James has done the last few weeks won’t be a bullet on a Wikipedia page. But it’s impressive. After conversations with Redick, James has slid seamlessly into a supporting role. He’s attempting a shade under 13 shots per game this month. That’s the fewest attempts per game in any month in his 23-year career.

“It’s the role that I’m playing for the ball club,” said James. “In order for us to win ball games, it’s the role that I’m playing and it’s just how the game is going.”

Earlier in the week, James rejected the bubbling narrative that the Lakers were better without him. “They’re absolutely wrong,” said James. Los Angeles is definitely better with this version of him. James shot 60% during the Lakers’ winning streak. His scoring was down. His steals were up. He’s deferred in the offense to Dončić and Reaves, turning his focus to playmaking and defense.

An example: With two minutes to play, the Lakers trailed by one. On the defensive possession, James matched up with Tobias Harris. As the ball crossed half court, Harris headed to the left block. Nearby, Duncan Robinson waited to set a screen to create a mismatch with Harris and Luke Kennard. James, reading it, came over the top, blew up the screen and was in perfect position to front Harris in the post. Instead of a high percentage shot in the paint, Detroit was forced into a contested drive by Daniss Jenkins.

“I’ve been around the block quite a while,” said James. “So I’ve seen a lot of the actions and things of that nature. So understanding the game as well.”

James gets his role. Seems Deandre Ayton does, too. Last month, Ayton decried the Lakers’ attempts at turning him into Clint Capela. Lately, he’s been playing like the best version of him. Ayton shot close to 70% during Los Angeles’s winning streak. Looking for a reason the Lakers defense jumped from the bottom third of the league to the top? Try Ayton, who has embraced his role as rebounder and rim protector.

Let’s stick with Ayton for a moment. There isn’t a more important role player this postseason. Not on the Lakers. Anywhere. In wins, Ayton is averaging 14.2 points and 9.2 rebounds on nearly 70% shooting. In losses, his production is sliced to 9.2 points and 6.6 rebounds on 61% shooting.

Consider the gauntlet the Lakers will have to face in the Western Conference. If the season ended today, L.A. would face Houston. That means Alperen Şengün and a physical frontcourt. In the second round, there’s that Victor Wembanyama fella. In the conference finals, Chet Holmgren will probably be waiting. The Lakers don’t need Ayton’s offense. They need him for everything else.

And if they get it? Admit it—this team can make a run. Dončić is the most potent offensive weapon in the game. Reaves has found a niche alongside him. James is the most qualified third option in NBA history who down the stretch can still dial it up. Marcus Smart is channeling his inner Celtic, while Rui Hachimura and Kennard have opened up the floor with their three-point shooting.

Listen to the Lakers the last few weeks and you can tell—they believe. Wins over Denver, Houston and Orlando were all competitive. Against Detroit, L.A. trailed by as many as 16. Asked what habits he liked about the Lakers the last few weeks, James said, “Mental toughness.”

“It’s a couple games where we got down,” said James. “A couple games where we got up, teams made a run, took leads, we [were] able to stay resilient and come back.”

A few weeks ago the path to the NBA Finals seemed like a lock to run through Oklahoma City or San Antonio. And maybe it still will. But the Lakers will enter the postseason with momentum, along with two of the best playoff performers of this generation. That’s a team you can’t count out.

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

LeBron James, by any imaginable measure, has played more NBA basketball than any human in history. He is the league’s all-time leader in minutes, games and seasons. When a player reaches the league as an 18-year-old, it’s usually safe to assume you’ll have seen everything he has by the time he’s 41. But a bit more than a week ago now, James showed head coach JJ Redick something he’d never seen before.

The Los Angeles Lakers trailed the Denver Nuggets by one with around one minute left in the fourth quarter of a critical game. Cam Johnson fired away from 3 for a shot that might have iced the game and, even though he missed, the rebound looked as though it would settle right back into the hands of Jamal Murray. That is, until James threw himself onto the court in an attempt to take back the ball. He couldn’t quite secure it, but he turned an offensive rebound for Denver into a jump ball that eventually led to a critical Marcus Smart steal on the way to perhaps their biggest victory of the season.

For Redick, this was new. “After the game, I said, ‘In 23 years of watching you play in the NBA and the three years I watched him play in high school, I never saw him make a full-out extension dive like that,” the Lakers coach explained, before revealing that James confirmed as much. “It’s awesome. I know he’ll feel that tomorrow, but that’s a winning play.”

Winning plays are, of course, old hat for James, but not this sort of winning play. James spent the first two decades and change of his career as the star around whom his teams needed to orbit. He orchestrated every possession on offense. At his best, he also took on the tougher available matchups on defense and even as he aged into more of an off-ball role on that end of the floor, he still used his unmatched basketball IQ to direct traffic and make plays. His teams have needed him available for as many of the 48 playable minutes in as many of the 82 scheduled games as humanly possible. Taking a needless injury risk like a full-extension floor dive for a loose ball just wasn’t worth it. He had role players for that.

Things changed when the Lakers traded for Luka Dončić. For the first time in his career, James was no longer the focal point of his team. The ascending Austin Reaves deprived him even of sidekick duties. Reaves, after all, basically has to play a star’s style. The entire value proposition of employing him depends on his usage being high to offset his defensive deficiencies. Even Redick acknowledged recently that “the best thing for our team is [James] being the third-highest-used player.”

As Kevin Love and Chris Bosh can likely attest, being the No. 3 option on a potential contender is a far cry from a standard star’s duties. Even at 41, James is still a star-level talent. He’s perfectly capable of summoning star-level performances when they’re needed. But as the Lakers have rounded into form with a nine-game winning streak that has the entire basketball world rethinking their ceiling, something fundamental has shifted not just in Lakerland, but in James’ entire career. He doesn’t have role players anymore; he is one.

We of course need to define our terms here. James is not, say, your run-of-the-mill, 3-and-D supporting piece or a grunt work forward whose value is entirely absent from the box score. In the six games since returning from a recent three-game absence, James is still averaging a wholly respectable 19 points, 7.3 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game on better than 60% shooting.

A role player, in the specific context we’re using the term here, does not mean squeezing into a narrow, archetypal role. It means carving out an entirely new one based on the needs of the team that he has. James said himself that he watched Reaves and Dončić thrive while he sat and so he “was able to come back and see how I fit best with those guys because they were playing so dynamic off one another” upon his return. He once subtweeted Kevin Love by telling him to “stop trying to find a way to FIT-OUT and just FIT-IN.” That is, essentially, what is happening here. James is going out of his way to contort his game to suit Dončić and Reaves. For most of his career, teammates did that to fit next to him. Now he’s doing it more than he ever has to fit in with his two star teammates.

So what does that mean? Even when he laid out the reality of James as the third option, Redick made it clear that he would still be “a high-usage player relative to your average player.” This is, broadly, true. James has a 21.3% usage rate in the six games since he’s returned, not terribly far from Reaves at 22.6% and certainly above an average starter. But there are a lot of ways to “use” a possession. For most of his career, James functioned as a primary ball-handler. He used possessions pounding the rock, isolating or running pick-and-roll to get his offense moving. This is how Dončić, spotting a monstrous 41.1% usage since James returned, generally functions, and how Reaves does to a lesser extent.

But it’s not really what James is doing now. At this stage, he’s functioning as a play-finisher and as a connector. Consider the following numbers. In all four of the data points we’re about to cover, we will track four different time periods: the 2019-20 season, when James was still in his prime and led the Lakers to a championship, the 2023-24 season, when James last led an offense for a whole year, his first 44 appearances this season, and then his last six after coming back from that recent absence. The goal here is to track the downward trends:

The trend lines here are all moving in the same direction. James is holding the ball less, taking less time to survey the defense and instead punishing it with quick decisions to pass, dribble or shoot. This makes plenty of intuitive sense. When James has functioned as a primary creator, he’s spent his time and dribbles creating advantages for teammates. Now, he’s getting the ball with advantages that Dončić or Reaves have created, and nothing kills an advantage like giving the defense time to reset. James is keeping things moving while operating from those advantages. Those head-down drives we’ve forever associated with him? Those are way down. He’s not creating his own points to nearly the same extent. In each of his first 22 NBA seasons, James made more unassisted shots than assisted ones. In this six-game stretch, around three-quarters of his shots have been assisted.

So if James isn’t actually creating his points, where are they coming from? Well, Synergy Sports tracks 11 different ways a player can “use” a possession, meaning take a shot, draw a foul or turn the ball over. Using those same four windows of time, let’s look at how James is using his possessions, measured in percentages.

These aren’t a perfect measure of what’s happening in an offense because they measure only how a possession ends, not everything that happens within one, but they are still a useful snapshot, and these numbers paint the same picture as the first set. James has all but cut isolations out of his game lately. He has as many field goals off of putbacks as he does as a pick-and-roll ball-handler. This is no longer a player taking the sort of shots or running the sort of offense that a star runs. This is a player who is reinventing himself around the teammates that he has.

So what does that mean? The standout number from this six-game stretch is that transition figure. Around one-third of his possessions have come there. This has been a quiet but important LeBron trend for years now. More and more of his offense has shifted towards the break because, as he’s gotten older, it’s gotten harder for him to create in the half-court. On a Dončić team, the ability to generate transition offense is critical because he rarely runs. The most common sight of this six-game stretch for the Lakers has been James leaking out after an opponent’s shot for two easy points on the other end.

In the half-court, the Lakers are increasingly relying on using James as the screener in pick-and-roll. James has been arguably the NBA’s most dangerous short-roll threat since his partnership with Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, though given his ball-handling duties, it’s rarely been more than a change-of-pace weapon.

His new dance partner is Austin Reaves, who he’s been developing this chemistry with for quite some time. With less on his plate as a ball-handler, it’s been a look the Lakers have been able to lean on more heavily. Reaves has reached that critical level as a creator in which there’s no perfect solution to defending him off of a ball-screen. Go under and he’ll happily pull up from 3. Chase him over and he’ll get you on his back and draw a foul. So more often than not, he’s drawing two on the ball even if it’s only for a quick show. Even that split second in which he has the attention of two defenders is enough for Reaves to find James, who’s either going to rampage to the basket for an easy bucket or foul or he’s going to dice a defense on a quick 4-on-3.

Similar principles can apply even when James isn’t the one setting the ball screen. Take this fake handoff set-up from Marcus Smart to Reaves. There are only two players on the ball, but Alperen Sengun is acting as the low man in the corner and needs to keep his eyes set on Reaves, who he assumes is about to get the ball going downhill. Meanwhile, Jake LaRavia cuts across the court for the express purpose of fooling Dorian Finney-Smith into assuming James is about to run back up to the top of the key — a reasonable fear since James can obviously create for himself or just fire the open 3. It’s all window dressing to set up the lob from Marcus Smart, giving James one of his biggest highlight dunks of the year.

This is an example of the Lakers using Reaves’ gravity to set up James, but the effect is even more powerful with Dončić. Four Rockets collapse on Dončić and Deandre Ayton on this pick-and-roll, but Ayton’s roll was the decoy. The real threat was James flying in from the corner. There are only a handful of scorers in the NBA dangerous enough to make Kevin Durant forget that he’s guarding LeBron James, but Dončić is one of them and the Lakers are weaponizing that.

This is playing out even more for James as a passer. Many of his assists are coming on plays like this: Dončić collapses the defense and passes it out to James. He then either attacks a compromised defense, weakens it further and then passes into an even better shot, or just jets the ball to the even more open man, knowing that the defense will rotate towards him.

Part of what makes James so effective in this role is that he’s never been a role player before. He’s LeBron James. If Dončić gets the defense into rotation and then the ball swings to maybe the best basketball player who’s ever lived, that defense is going to panic, and suddenly a minor advantage Dončić creates is a huge one James can build off of. This is the best version of two star ball-handlers in the same offense. It’s not your turn, my turn; it’s your turn turns into my turn. Two legends building off of one another. James has entirely handed primary creation duty off to Dončić and Reaves, yet can still be an enormously valuable secondary creator off of them. He’s spent his whole life creating these sorts of advantages for others. Now he’s starting possessions with them and taking them even further.

There’s no real precedent for a shift like this. James has only a handful of historic peers to begin with. Though their careers ended prematurely, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird never transitioned from offensive engines into supporting offensive pieces. Neither did Michael Jordan, as his first two retirements came at the peak of his powers and by the time he returned for a third stint, his Wizards rosters were so bad that he had no choice but to be the focal point. Kobe Bryant got hurt and spent the end of his career on lottery teams. There are lesser Hall of Famers who’ve become role players on winners — players like Jason Kidd and Gary Payton come to mind as somewhat recent examples — but among MVPs, this never really happens.

Even someone like James Harden for the Cavaliers now doesn’t really count. Part of Cleveland’s rationale for acquiring him was to cover for Donovan Mitchell’s playmaking deficiencies. The Cavaliers needed a point guard next to him. More often than not, players like this can only really function as centerpieces. Russell Westbrook was a superstar, and then he was nearly impossible to fit onto an existing, competing team as a role player. There was no in-between. Star skills and role player skills can be very different, and trying to translate those skills from one end of that spectrum to the other while scaling down in usage can be pretty precarious.

This is the ironic difficulty in calling James a role player. This “role” doesn’t really exist. He’s making it up as he goes. He’s clearly not functioning in the ways that stars typically do anymore, but there’s no real term for what he is at the moment. A popular comparison has been Draymond Green, but Green has never remotely scored at the level James is even now. Is LeBron James now the LeBron James of Draymond Greens?

I’ll borrow a concept Green’s coach, Steve Kerr, used to describe a different player, Josh Hart, during the buildup to the 2023 FIBA World Cup. “People ask ‘What position does he play?’ He plays winner,” Kerr said. That echoes the “winning plays” sentiment that Redick mentioned on that loose ball James dove for. The Lakers haven’t lost since James returned and fully embraced this style, and even that doesn’t quite do justice to what is happening here.

The entire theory of the Lakers as a contender this season rested on being so good offensively that their defensive shortcomings wouldn’t matter. In his first 44 games this season, the Lakers scored 113.4 points per 100 possessions with James on the floor and were outscored in his minutes, leading some to argue the Lakers were better without him. In this six-game stretch, they’re scoring 120.6 points per 100 possessions. It’s an admittedly tiny sample, but that would be both the third-greatest regular-season offense in NBA history and the highest individual offensive rating James has posted in his career if stretched over a full season. That’s the dominant offense theory of this roster coming to fruition. He’s far from the only reason it’s happening, but he’s buying into what the team needs fully, and it’s hard not to feel as though it’s trickling down.

Think about Deandre Ayton. It’s been less than a month since ESPN reported that Ayton had bristled against the idea that the Lakers were trying to turn him into Clint Capela. But Ayton has been great recently, embracing the less glamorous, Capela-esque screening, rebounding and defending like the Lakers need him to do in order to win. Less than a week ago, he told The Athletic that he had accepted that the Lakers didn’t need him to be the scorer he wanted to be. “I just started looking in the mirror and said ‘Yo bro, … you’re not that guy.”

It’s probably easier to accept that you’re not that guy when you’re watching LeBron James of all people actively choose not to be that guy. If arguably the most accomplished basketball player of all time is willing to take a smaller role in order to win, it’s easier to accept that you should too. The entire team is clicking right now. Dončić is mounting a late MVP campaign in part because there’s suddenly complete clarity in his partnership with James. It’s his team now, and everyone else is fitting perfectly into the roles the Lakers envisioned for them. This is the best they’ve played all year, bar none. Even if the individual numbers don’t show it, that’s true for James as well. A transition like this has been a necessity since Reaves’ early season breakout.

It took most of the season, but James figured it out. James has been a winner throughout his career, but always on his terms, always as the superstar. At 41 and with Dončić on his team, that just isn’t his best path to winning anymore. He’s not the most physically gifted player in the NBA at this point, but he’s still probably the smartest, a basketball genius capable of creating this new role on the fly. That “winner” moniker feels like the only appropriate way to describe it. James has won throughout his career, but he’s done so, in the simplest of terms, by just being the best player.

Now he’s something different, something subtler. He’s completely reorienting his game in a way he’s never needed to in order to give a team built around Dončić and Reaves the best chance of winning. For most of his career, his play defined his teams and all they needed were players to support him. Now he’s the supporting piece, and his play is defined by what his team needs. Even after 23 years, LeBron James is still evolving, and that evolution is giving new life to a once seemingly dead Lakers season.

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

DETROIT — The last time the Los Angeles Lakers lost a one-possession game, Austin Reaves sat in near silence inside the visitors’ locker room in Phoenix. The last time the Lakers lost a one-possession game, Reaves didn’t know if the team was stuck being what it was. The last time the Lakers lost a one-possession game, he couldn’t have known that the next three weeks or so would unfold quite like this.

On Monday night, Reaves sat silently again inside a road locker room, the Lakers having lost 113-110 to the Detroit Pistons. The quiet wasn’t a sign, though, of some existential crisis. It wasn’t representative of a team that had its spirit broken. Instead, it was a stillness born out of a growing certainty about what the Lakers are, regardless of the loss.

Had the team not changed, Reaves said, Monday would’ve gone differently. The moment the Pistons sprinted to a double-digit lead, the outcome would’ve been assured.

“We woulda lost by a hundred,” Reaves said.

The Lakers didn’t, of course. They just didn’t win. Maybe that would’ve felt hollow if their recent nine-game winning streak had come with plenty of other moments that threatened to break them at obvious pressure points.

A late collapse against the Denver Nuggets? Didn’t matter. A surge of energy and physicality from the Houston Rockets? Extreme fatigue in Miami against the Heat? A tough whistle in Orlando versus the Magic?

“Woulda lost by 100,” Reaves said with a grin.

The Lakers (46-26) won all those games. They nearly won another in Detroit. While they are too talented to claim moral victories — and while Reaves was certainly upset his team didn’t win — the way things went against the Pistons cemented so many of the habits the Lakers have been trying to build all season.

“The growth we’ve had with being able to bend but not break — tonight was another example of that,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “Really, really sharp and good defensively for three quarters. Second quarter, not so much. … But we did a good job of defending. We did a good job of just staying with it and got back in the game.”

Their winning streak included wins over eight teams with winning records. Their last four losses — to the Magic on Feb. 24, at Phoenix on Feb. 26, at Denver on March 5 and Monday in Detroit — have come by a total of 14 points. They’re in control of their destiny in the Western Conference when it comes to the No. 3 seed, owning tiebreakers against Denver, Houston and Minnesota.

It all left the Lakers sounding confident, even though they couldn’t get past the Cade Cunningham-less Pistons on Monday.

“There were a couple games (during the streak) where we got down,” LeBron James said. “A couple games that we got up, teams made a run, took leads, and we were able to stay resilient and come back. So we’re a tough-minded (group).

“Even with tonight, we got down again versus a very good team on their home floor. Obviously, they had probably been waiting on this matchup. It’s been a long road trip for us, so for us to still be able to have it be a one-possession game coming down the stretch, that’s what you can look forward to.”

An “almost” win might not seem like much in a vacuum, but that’s not how an NBA season works. The Lakers, playing their fifth road game in eight days, fought through fatigue. They didn’t balk and succumb to previous bad habits.

“I think where we were earlier in the year, all of us, probably the coaching staff included, was like, when things go bad, you revert back to your means of self-preservation, whatever that may look like for each individual,” Redick said pregame.

In Monday’s loss, Luka Dončić dove into the first row to save a loose ball. Reaves rebounded from a slow start. James didn’t score in the first half for just the third time in his career, but he never felt out of the game (he finished one rebound shy of a triple-double). Deandre Ayton made big plays down the stretch. All were done within the context of the team’s plan, and all were done out of habit.

“In order for us to win ball games, it’s the role that I’m playing,” James said of the scoreless half — his first in more than 15 years. “And that’s just how the game was going.”

His statement wasn’t passive-aggressive; it was matter-of-fact.

“We’re a good basketball team,” Redick said. “I believe that we’re a good basketball team. I thought we could be a good basketball team the entire season. We saw flashes of it. We saw short stretches of it, but we’re a good basketball team, and I think we have to continue to play together and all that stuff.”

If the last 10 games were about proving the Lakers are a quality team, the challenge over the final 10 regular-season games will be maintaining that level of play while physically preparing for the playoffs. Reaves, Dončić and James have all been on the injury report over the past week, and all three played through whatever had been bothering them. Both Marcus Smart and Rui Hachimura missed Monday’s game and are considered day to day, but Redick doesn’t sound like a coach in a hurry to get players back.

What the last 10 games showed him is that if the Lakers are whole, they’re a scary basketball team.

“Not having Smart tonight killed us,” Redick said. “That’s important for us, that we can get healthy and we can play our rotation. Post-Luke (Kennard) trade, I think when all nine guys have played, we’ve been a good basketball team. And I think (Jarred Vanderbilt) did a great job tonight. When he had his minutes, he was ready to play.

“But the way our team works, you need Smart for his ballhandling, you need Smart for his defense, you need Rui for his shooting. Those pieces are important to complement everybody. And, you know, we need to finish the season strong, but we also need to finish the season healthy.”

FROM ABOVE ARTICLE:

Lakers finally beaten.

The win streak stops at nine. The Lakers finally lost, falling 113–110 in Detroit after another hard-fought, physical battle.

This six-game road trip has still been a clear success, filled with big wins and exciting moments, but the last couple of games are starting to show the toll. The Lakers look like a tired, banged-up team that needs a break. And in this one, short-handed without key rotation players in Marcus Smart and Rui Hachimura, the clutch luck that carried them through the streak finally ran out.

Luckily for the Lakers, their direct competitor, the Rockets, lost as well. That means they still hold a two-game lead for the third spot and have a relatively favorable schedule ahead, by some metrics even the easiest among all contending teams in the West, with six of their last 10 games at home.

Source: tankathon.com

The Lakers need to forget this game quickly, recover as best they can, and finish the job by winning the final game of this road trip before finally returning home for a three-game homestand.

Today’s notes:

Tired legs stuck in Pistons mud

Turnovers, the ghost of games past

Marcus Smart is irreplaceable (VIDEO)

Jaxson Hayes activity and rim protection (VIDEO)

Kennard’s miss hurt, but the ones he doesn’t take are more problematic (VIDEO)

1-Tired legs stuck in Pistons mud

All teams are banged up and battling something at this stage of the season, and the team in yellow is no exception. This was their 13th game in 23 days in March, their fifth in the last eight days, all on the road and all hard battles against playoff-level teams.

And you could see J.B. Bickerstaff and his team knew this. Detroit is one of the most physical teams in the league, and they went right at the Lakers from the first possession. Full-court pressure, grabbing, holding, pushing, hitting… the OKC strategy of refs can’t call every foul, so keep fouling until they do. And in this game, they didn’t. I don’t want to say bad calls decided this one, my point is that the criteria and the lack of calls made it a game played on the Pistons’ terms. Luka Dončić, LeBron James, and Austin Reaves were all frustrated by the hits and lack of calls they received in this game.

Dončić also looked less spry, hobbled at times during the game, and maybe that was one of the reasons for his far from ideal night in terms of shot selection and shot-making. He still finished with 32 points, but used 29 shots to get there and was just 3 of 13 from three. A rare off night for a player we saw dominate on this trip, earning him another Player of the Week selection.

The Lakers, as a team, had an overall poor shooting night. They shot 17 of 53, or just 32 percent, on non-rim shots beyond four feet from the basket. A byproduct of the Pistons’ pressure, but also tired legs.

Source: Cleaning the Glass

2-Turnovers, the ghost of games past

Maybe I jinxed it. Yesterday, in my 70-game check, I highlighted the Lakers’ much improved ball control and ability to limit turnovers as one of the key trends behind their recent turnaround.

Last night, the Lakers, despite their poor shot-making, did enough to give themselves a chance. Despite some costly collapses, they battled on defense. They made another second-half run after falling behind by as much as 16. They took care of the ball, which kept the much more athletic Pistons in check in transition. Well, they did that last part until the fourth quarter.

The Lakers had 7, by my count even 8, of their 12 turnovers in the fourth quarter. Six of those, including two on the first two possessions, came in the first four and a half minutes during the stretch when Dončić was resting and Reaves and James were running the offense.

Reaves, who scored 24 points on 7 of 15 shooting, was the most efficient Lakers creator and probably could have gotten more opportunities down the stretch with Dončić struggling. But the Lakers had two rough stints with Dončić on the bench, struggling against the Pistons’ on-ball pressure and losing both decisively. Those fourth-quarter turnovers kept the Lakers trailing even during stretches when the Pistons couldn’t buy a bucket.

3-Marcus Smart is irreplaceable (VIDEO)

“Not having Smart tonight killed us.” – JJ Redick post-game.

Another thing I highlighted in the 70-game check is that the Lakers got healthy, finally figured out the starting lineup, and started to build continuity with it. Last night, Jake LaRavia replaced Smart, who was out due to right hip soreness, and the drop-off was visible and significant.

Without Smart, the Lakers’ perimeter and point-of-attack defense collapsed, allowing a career-high 30 points to Pistons second-year backup point guard Daniss Jenkins. Jenkins is an underrated on-ball creator, and both LaRavia and Reaves struggled to defend his pick-and-roll actions and drives to the basket.

Jenkins scored on two crucial, consecutive possessions against LaRavia and Reaves in the last minute. Especially that first LaRavia foul was a play where more patience and discipline were needed.

LaRavia has a great motor and can make an impact with his energy and hustle, but possessions like these show why he was overtaxed as a primary defender earlier in the season when he had to play extended minutes because of injuries.

The Lakers still had a chance to win, but went 0 of 2 on their final two possessions, with Dončić missing a mid-range pull-up over Kevin Huerter, and the Pistons deflecting James’ inbound pass to Dončić on the final play, forcing him into a heavily contested heave instead of an open three.

4-Jaxson Hayes activity and rim protection (VIDEO)

The Lakers’ defense had problems defending Jenkins’ pick-and-roll and Duncan Robinson’s dribble handoff actions for most of the game. Both got loose for a couple of open threes in the middle of the game, when the Pistons built their double-digit lead.

However, the Lakers’ activity and defensive playmaking were again good enough to keep them in the game until the end. Dončić had three steals and drew another charge, his 13th of the season. Unlike in prior games, Deandre Ayton had a very active first stint, with a block and multiple offensive rebounds. But it was his backup, Jaxson Hayes, who shined with 6 stocks (4 blocks and 2 steals).

Hayes struggled against the stronger Jalen Duren on the offensive glass, but made all five of his shots, once again showing the progress he has made this season into a solid backup center.

5-Kennard’s miss hurt, but the ones he doesn’t take are more problematic (VIDEO)

Luke Kennard, who was a hero in the previous game against the Magic, calmly draining the game-winning three, had a rough shooting night, going just 1 of 5 from beyond the arc in this one. He had another opportunity to hit a late-game dagger, but missed a good look after Ausar Thompson went for a double against Dončić late in the game.

Shooters shoot, and Kennard will make more than he misses. For Kennard and the Lakers, the more problematic shots are the ones he doesn’t take.

Kennard’s shooting makes him, in theory, an ideal partner for guard-to-guard screening actions with Dončić, something many teams, including past Dončić-led Mavericks teams, use in end-of-game or end-of-quarter situations. These actions either create a switch and a mismatch for Dončić against a smaller guard, or an open pop three for the shooter if the defense collapses on Luka.

Why in theory? Because Kennard’s slower release and hesitancy to shoot are big reasons why he has been a high-accuracy but low-volume three-point shooter throughout his career.

Some of the shots Kennard passed up weren’t ideal open looks, but they are shots a great shooter like him has to take to keep the pressure on the defense and serve as an antidote to teams loading up on Dončić. These are actions that become crucial in the playoffs, where closeouts are even faster with even less time to shoot. Reggie Bullock and Tim Hardaway Jr., two of Dončić’s former teammates, were not on Kennard’s level as pure snipers, but their quick trigger made them more dangerous in these guard-to-guard screening actions.

We’ll see if Kennard can grow more confidence and comfort with more reps, because as it stands, it puts a cap on his potential, especially for the playoffs.

Just love how LeBron and Austin like each other so much.
LeBron and two short white guys. What a trio.

LeBron James on the first time he saw Austin Reaves play:“After we signed him, I went back and watched a lot of his Wichita State highlights and games and then a lot of his Oklahoma highlights and games as well. The first thing I noticed, it’s kind of funny. We always talk… pic.twitter.com/C3TzrdT0qA— NBA Courtside (@NBA__Courtside) March 24, 2026

LeBron James on the first time he saw Austin Reaves play 😭“After we signed him, I went back and watched a lot of his Wichita State highlights and games and then a lot of his Oklahoma highlights and games as well. The first thing I noticed, it’s kind of funny. We always talk… pic.twitter.com/2DOKOEXN5Z— Basketball Forever (@bballforever_) March 25, 2026