ATLANTA – Anthony Davis scowled as the seconds ran out on Sunday afternoon. The Lakers have had a lot of disappointment this season, but it hasn’t made handling it any easier.
Davis was frustrated with a bundle of mistakes he saw as preventable: a possession when Malik Monk could have pitched to him to set up an easier look; a late foul by Avery Bradley that turned a four-point Atlanta lead into six; a number of busted coverages on Hawks superstar Trae Young that he exploited to the tune of 36 points.
The sum was dizzying: Atlanta outscored the Lakers 38-20 in the telltale fourth, leading to a 129-121 loss the Lakers could ill afford as they closed out a 2-4 road trip missing LeBron James. They haven’t been complete, but there’s no time to wait for that anymore. With three straight losses, they dropped to 24-27, and with just 31 games to go, there’s a sense that the season is slipping through their fingers.
“There’s no excuse for us losing this game tonight, obviously,” he said. “Down the stretch, our execution has to be better on both ends of the ball.”
Earlier this month, the Lakers whipped the short-handed Hawks in Los Angeles, their fourth straight win. But in Atlanta’s own seventh straight win on Sunday, they demonstrated how far they’ve come — and maybe how far the Lakers have dropped off without James, who missed his third straight game.
In the fourth quarter flop, the Lakers squandered an 11-point lead as they couldn’t slow the Hawks’ momentum. In particular, they struggled with the pick-and-roll anchored by Onyeka Okongwu, the USC product, who cruised through the defense for dunks on his way to 16 points.
Finally, midway through the quarter, Lou Williams knocked down a corner three that put Atlanta on top, thrusting the Lakers back into pursuit. Davis had 27 points, and Russell Westbrook had 20 points with 12 assists, but the defense began to falter – the Hawks shot 58.3% in the game – and the offense shriveled with it.
The deciding sequence was devastating: Monk, who parlayed his hot shooting into a season-best 33 points, declined Davis’ calls for the ball: “I literally was going to catch the ball and wanted him to fly off for a pitch back and stop behind 3,” Davis said later.
Instead, Monk couldn’t sink a contested three at the end of the clock. Young took the ball back and pulled up from deep over Westbrook, giving a shiver to celebrate his cold sense of ruthlessness.
Monk missed an open 3-pointer on the next trip down. Then with 25 seconds left, Bradley misinterpreted a directive by coach Frank Vogel not to foul – and did foul, giving Young two more points at the line. Davis gave a withering glare over to the bench after the foul, which he struggled to make sense of.
“I think the most frustrating part is that we can’t finish games,” he said. “We’ve had a lot of games that we had won and teams come back and beat us.”
From the tip, defense was optional. The Lakers galloped out on offense hitting eight of their first 10 shots, and Davis was at the forefront while carving up the Hawks’ interior. But Atlanta gave as good as they got, with John Collins (20 points) getting out to a good start.
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The streaky play defined even the Lakers’ good stretches. They made 10 straight field goals going into halftime, capped by Monk’s rattling 3-pointer at the buzzer. They also put together a three-and-a-half-minute run when the Hawks could not score a point as the third quarter wound down – only a technical foul on Carmelo Anthony got them on the board before time ticked out.
But as hot as they got, the cold snaps were impossible to overcome. Through three quarters, they shot 61.5%; in the fourth, they hit just 31.8%. The soft-double teams that had flustered Young in the first half fell apart as the shifty point guard had 13 of his points and 3 assists in the last frame.
The last two losses have seen the Lakers come up short in the fourth quarter, which has left the Lakers in the frustratingly familiar position of feeling like they’re on the cusp of figuring out their identity – only to come up wanting in the win column.
“I thought the last two games we played really well, we just fell short,” Vogel said. “We always feel like we have enough even Bron, or in Charlotte Bron and AD are out. We showed we have enough to be right there at the end. We just need to make a couple more plays to get these Ws.”
The bigger problem: They’re running out of chances to get it right.