There are no moral victories in the NBA, but the Los Angeles Lakers do deserve an “A” for effort for the way they battled down the stretch against the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday.
Playing in their fourth game of a six-game Eastern road trip, L.A. got LeBron James and Anthony Davis back to full health – and promptly fell behind to Joel Embiid and company, as it struggled with its shooting early.
The Lakers trailed 33-20 early in the second quarter, then got back in the contest by hitting 13 shots in a row, only to fall behind again by a sizable margin, this time by 16 with 4:53 left in the fourth quarter.
A gnarly flurry allowed them to force overtime, but once there, they ran out of juice and lost, 133-122.
But head coach Darvin Ham was happy with the way his team fought tooth and nail.
“We survived some unfortunate calls by the officials, and I’m not one to blame them, but some of those foul calls were unfortunate. … But we can get better from this. I told the team, as disappointed as I am that we didn’t get the win, I still can have a good meal and sleep like a baby tonight because of the way we competed, and we did not quit, we did not give up. There was a point in the game where we could’ve just folded our tent, but we kept scratching away, kept digging deep, kept making plays one stop after another one and put ourselves in a position to win the game.
“… I’m not upset or distraught, just disappointed because we fought our way back into it and had a chance right there to win it, couldn’t quite seal the deal.”
The Lakers will have the opportunity to end this road trip with an acceptable 3-3 record when they face the Detroit Pistons, one of the NBA’s worst teams, on Sunday.
