The Los Angeles Lakers have lost their third straight game, and their second straight third-quarter collapse, to the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Cup, but at least fans had a LeBron James highlight dunk answering a dunk from Kevin Durant in the second quarter. At that point, the Suns held a six-point lead, but they blew the game open with a 36-point third quarter in a repeat of the Lakers’ embarrassing blowout loss to the Nuggets on Saturday.
Check out the replay of LeBron James going dunk for dunk with Kevin Durant in this replay shared by ClutchPoints on X, formerly Twitter.
LeBron James still has it, but his team is not good
Similar to recent seasons, not even a new coach in JJ Redick could stop the Lakers from going up and down again this year. For instance, the Purple and Gold started this year 3-0 against quality teams (including the Suns) but they lost four in a row.
Next, they won six straight games, but now they’ve lost three straight games in embarrassing fashion.
In their loss to the Magic on Thursday, AD inexplicably missed two free throws to ice the game, which allowed Franz Wagner to hit the game-winning three.
Then, they kept it close against the Nuggets–who’ve had their number in the last two playoffs–in the first half, but then had a meltdown in the third quarter, giving up 37 points while scoring only 15.
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Finally, on their NBA Cup game against the Suns, the Lakers repeated the script. They kept it close for 24 minutes before collapsing in the third again, giving up 36 points while scoring only 18.
Moreover, this loss came after Redick called out Lakers players for failing to give any effort and compete against the Nuggets.
While Redick called that game an “aberration,” perhaps this is actually what the Lakers are: an infuriatingly inconsistent team that regularly plays not to lose, giving up leads or giving up 30-point quarters.
This Lakers team needs one or two more trades to put them over the top, and they need Christian Wood and Jarred Vanderbilt to return from injury, but their decisions to stop playing in random quarters will take more time to fix.
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