Lakers HC Makes Luka Doncic MVP Prediction Ahead of Season<\/a><\/p>\nThe Lakers were lackluster in the first and third quarters of the contest, and that was ultimately their downfall, losing those quarters by a total of 16 points.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their defense collapsed for most of the second half, and the Warriors made them pay.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lakers start the season at 0-1, and fail to start the season strongly after their 1-5 preseason.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is clear\u00a0the Lakers have a long way to go if they want to make a deep playoff run.<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old superstar is the Lakers’ best player. He was the best player on the court, and it showed. Doncic was on a tear from the jump, and finished the game with 43 points on 17-for-27 shooting from the field, 12 rebounds, nine assists, two steals and one block in 41 minutes of action.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Slovenian superstar did it all for the Lakers, accounting for 39 percent of the team’s points. Doncic received very little help in the contest, with only two other players,\u00a0Austin Reaves and DeAndre Ayton, reaching double digits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lakers’ biggest concern before the start of the season was their perimeter defense, and they did nothing to ease\u00a0thoseworries after their season-opening loss.\u00a0<\/p>\n
LA did not make life\u00a0harder\u00a0on the likes of Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Buddy Hield or even Jonathan Kuminga. Those four players combined for 88 points. As a team, the Warriors were ever efficient, shooting 48.7 percent from the field and 42.5 percent from beyond the arc.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marcus Smart was supposed ot be the answer to that; however, he got into early foul trouble and never found his groove on the defensive side of the ball.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Time will tell how things translate on that side for the Lakers, but after one game, it did not look pretty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lakers came into the offseason needing to address their center spot after being exposed in the playoffs by the Minnesota Timberwolves. One game into the 2025-26 season, that concern still looms large.<\/p>\n
Every time Ayton had the ball, things seemed rough for him, and the game looked a lot more difficult for him than it should’ve been. The numbers tell the story in this sense, and so does the eye test.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not time to hit the panic button just yet, but his performance didn\u2019t inspire much confidence that he\u2019s the solution for LA\u2019s issues at the center position.<\/p>\n
The Lakers will look for their first win of the season on Friday when they host the Timberwolves.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For more news and notes on the Los Angeles Lakers, visit\u00a0Los Angeles Lakers on SI<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers dropped their season opener on Tuesday night against their division rivals, the Golden State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-242749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/242750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}