At a certain point, you can’t blame the people for reacting to what they’re seeing.
But later in the night, with the clock nearing expiration, the Lakers’ home arena jumped as the team put together a turnover-fueled run toward its first win of the season.
Staring down the Suns defense with the score tied, LeBron James drove right at the rim and scored. Then, one possession later, he did it again.
The hoops injected life into the game, and ultimately, led to a 100-95 win on a night when the Lakers didn’t have their best stuff for most of it.
In their first game in Los Angeles this season, the Lakers sputtered. After selling their offseason as one defined by the ability to pick up from where they last left off, the Lakers looked like a group of basketball strangers, any semblance of identity sticking for a possession or two before it disappeared.
But fourth-quarter stops — the Suns shot 26.3 percent from the field and turned it over seven times in the quarter alone — allowed the Lakers to erase a 12-point deficit. Kevin Durant led the Suns with 37 points.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Anthony Davis scored 30, including 13 in the fourth, and James added 21. James played 35 minutes, five more than the informal goal the Lakers’ coaches and medical team had set going into the season.
While the Nuggets’ togetherness was fingered as the culprit for the Lakers’ opening night loss in Denver, more troubling issues, ones like effort and toughness, nearly brought down the Lakers in game No. 2.
The Lakers got killed on the glass, Phoenix quickly scoring a dozen points off offensive rebounds. And without Devin Booker and Bradley Beal, both sidelined with injuries, the Suns even weathered a slow Durant start while the Lakers’ outside shooting clanked shot after shot.
It wasn’t until the fourth quarter when the Lakers defense, keyed by effort from Gabe Vincent and Christian Wood, began to get enough consecutive stops to get some momentum and begin a run.
The Lakers play again Sunday in Sacramento against the Kings.
