{"id":115214,"date":"2025-12-31T17:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T17:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/115214\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T17:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T17:58:08","slug":"lakers-takeaways-pistons-dominate-paint-lakers-close-out-a-sub-500-december","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/115214\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers takeaways: Pistons dominate paint, Lakers close out a sub-.500 December"},"content":{"rendered":"

p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> <\/p>\n

The scouting report was clear. The Pistons (25-8) were second in the league in points in the paint. They were third in points off turnovers and third in turnovers forced.<\/p>\n

The Lakers played directly into Detroit\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n

Detroit scored 74 points in the paint, the most allowed by the Lakers all season, and capitalized on 21 Lakers turnovers for 30 points. Entering the game, the Pistons\u2019 58.1 points in the paint per game were only narrowly behind Oklahoma City\u2019s league-leading 58.2.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to definitely match their physicality,\u201d said Luka Doncic<\/a>, who led the Lakers with 30 points and 11 assists, but had eight turnovers, which is tied for his second-most in a game this season. \u201cThat\u2019s the whole point. We got to match how they play.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last week, the Lakers faced Phoenix and Houston, two teams with similar styles to Detroit. The Suns averaged 59 paint points in their two wins over the Lakers in December compared to 44 in the Lakers\u2019 Dec. 14 win. The Rockets poured in 68 paint points on Christmas Day.<\/p>\n

The Pistons made more shots in the paint (37) than the Lakers attempted (34) and kept their shooting percentage sky-high when three-pointers started to fall. Detroit, which had been shooting 34.7% from three this season, made 11 of 24 (45.8%) from beyond the arc Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a game plan,\u201d James said as the Lakers allowed a season-high 63.2% shooting from the field. \u201cWe understand that they\u2019re probably No. 1 in points in the paint in the NBA. They get a lot of their points off fast breaks and in the paint. So we knew we\u2019d try to make them miss from the outside and they made some tonight and that\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marcus Sasser hit four of six from three, all in the second half, to finish with 19 points off the bench. Cade Cunningham starred for the Pistons with 27 points and 11 assists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"p]:text-cms-story-body-color-text clearfix”> The scouting report was clear. The Pistons (25-8) were second in the league in points in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[18125,1732,7017,423,12130,48,52,51,1415,47,50,49,61581,61293,1417,7556,278,61582,427,68,34124],"class_list":["post-115214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ayton","tag-bench","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-game","tag-hayes","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lakers","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-paint","tag-pistons","tag-point","tag-rebound","tag-season","tag-sub-500-december","tag-team","tag-tuesday","tag-turnover"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}