The Los Angeles Lakers lost consecutive games for the first time during the 2020-21 season, falling to the Detroit Pistons 107-92, which was also completing a consecutive streak.
The Lakers were without Anthony Davis, as he was unavailable due to a hip injury, and the team seemed apathetic at both ends. Offensively, Los Angeles was unable to hit the shots, and defensively they had trouble covering Blake Griffin and Wayne Ellington.
Coach Frank Vogel took responsibility for the defeat, recalling that he was forced to play in squads that did not spend much time together this season.
“I don’t know if we ran out of gas,” said Vogel. “We just didn’t have a great pace in that second half at all. We’ll go back, look at the tape and see where we went wrong. We were not so defensive and that forced us not to go out on the field.
“Playing without Anthony, we were just looking to find a rhythm with combinations that we are not used to being out there. We just don’t find it. We’ve been doing really well on the road, but tonight was definitely not our night. “
Vogel tried several different combinations over the course of the night, opting to play against Alex Caruso earlier and give Talen Horton-Tucker more minutes. Both were sparks for a Laker team without a rudder, but in the end the team faltered in fourth place, where they failed to score over a six-minute stretch.
“We had a lot of firepower to win this basketball game,” said Vogel. “I have to do a better job, putting the guys in the right places to be successful and use our depth. We just didn’t get ahead in that second half. “
It would normally be easy to worry about a loss to a bad team like the Pistons, but considering the circumstances and how the Lakers have already shown that they can be, it would be wiser to consider this a blip.
However, they have another difficult test when they face rival Boston Celtics.
Vogel doesn’t care about the Lakers in the long run
Leaving a championship and out of season shortened, disappointments like the loss to Detroit should be expected over the course of a regular season. Vogel knows what his team’s roof looks like and emphasized that he is not concerned with their progress.
“We’ll be fine,” he said. “You have nights like this over a long season. We will be fine, we will recover. None of us are happy with the way we play, but we will recover. “
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