The Los Angeles Lakers had this one in hand, and then they let it slip right through their fingers.
What looked like a strong night turned into a 101-89 loss to the Golden State Warriors, with Los Angeles seeing its offense stall out as the game wore on. Austin Reaves led the Lakers with 28 points, Quentin Grimes chipped in nine points and six assists, and yet the bigger picture was impossible to ignore: the Lakers finished with 29 turnovers and never found another steady source of offense.
Golden State didn’t exactly light it up, either. The Warriors shot just 39.3% from the field and 28.0% from three, but they were far cleaner with the ball and made enough timely plays to complete the comeback.
The turnover gap told the story better than anything else. Los Angeles coughed it up 29 times.
Golden State only did so eight times. In a game where neither side was especially sharp as a shooter, that kind of mismatch is devastating.
Reaves did almost everything he could to keep the Lakers moving early. He finished with 28 points on 10-18 shooting, hit four threes, and went 4-4 at the line.
He also added seven assists and four rebounds. But even that strong line came with seven turnovers, and that put extra strain on a Lakers offense that had no real fallback plan.
Jake LaRavia scored only four points. Grimes finished with nine. Sandro Mamukelashvili provided 10 points off the bench, but Los Angeles never found a second or third option it could trust to keep pressure on the Warriors.
Golden State’s own scoring looked a little ordinary on paper. Stephen Curry had 11 points on 3-9 shooting.
The difference was that the Warriors had enough help around him to keep the engine running. Brandin Podziemski and Yaxel Lendeborg each scored 17 points.
Gui Santos added 10 points, five rebounds, and three assists. Charles Bassey gave them eight points, 12 rebounds, and three blocks.
De’Anthony Melton piled up seven steals in 21 minutes.
That kind of balance mattered. The Warriors didn’t need a huge night from Curry because the rest of the group kept producing and, just as importantly, protected possessions.
Los Angeles, meanwhile, finished with 45 rebounds and shot 43.4% from the field, which normally gives a team a reasonable path to win. But the Lakers also hit only nine of their 34 three-point attempts and ended with just 22 assists, numbers that were buried under the turnover problem.
Walker Kessler had 11 points and nine rebounds, and Mamukelashvili added 10 points and seven rebounds, but those contributions weren’t enough to cover for the sloppy stretches that kept opening the door for Golden State.
The final takeaway is plain: the Lakers have to clean this up before the mistakes start becoming the identity. They don’t need to be perfect offensively. They do need to stop handing games away.
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There is still time to clean it up, but the margin is getting thinner with roster decisions looming and the group being trimmed to 15 players before the opener. Hardy, James, Jarred Vanderbilt and Dalton Knecht are among the names hovering on the bubble, and every preseason possession matters a little more when the staff is weighing fit, execution and trust. For the Lakers, the next stretch is less about flash than about showing the ball can move without leaking away. [Read more 🡒]