DETROIT — The last time the Los Angeles Lakers lost a one-possession game, Austin Reaves sat in near silence inside the visitors’ locker room in Phoenix. The last time the Lakers lost a one-possession game, Reaves didn’t know if the team was stuck being what it was. The last time the Lakers lost a one-possession game, he couldn’t have known that the next three weeks or so would unfold quite like this.
On Monday night, Reaves sat silently again inside a road locker room, the Lakers having lost 113-110 to the Detroit Pistons. The quiet wasn’t a sign, though, of some existential crisis. It wasn’t representative of a team that had its spirit broken. Instead, it was a stillness born out of a growing certainty about what the Lakers are, regardless of the loss.
Had the team not changed, Reaves said, Monday would’ve gone differently. The moment the Pistons sprinted to a double-digit lead, the outcome would’ve been assured.
“We woulda lost by a hundred,” Reaves said.
The Lakers didn’t, of course. They just didn’t win. Maybe that would’ve felt hollow if their recent nine-game winning streak had come with plenty of other moments that threatened to break them at obvious pressure points.
A late collapse against the Denver Nuggets? Didn’t matter. A surge of energy and physicality from the Houston Rockets? Extreme fatigue in Miami against the Heat? A tough whistle in Orlando versus the Magic?
“Woulda lost by 100,” Reaves said with a grin.
The Lakers (46-26) won all those games. They nearly won another in Detroit. While they are too talented to claim moral victories — and while Reaves was certainly upset his team didn’t win — the way things went against the Pistons cemented so many of the habits the Lakers have been trying to build all season.
“The growth we’ve had with being able to bend but not break — tonight was another example of that,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “Really, really sharp and good defensively for three quarters. Second quarter, not so much. … But we did a good job of defending. We did a good job of just staying with it and got back in the game.”
The evidence is growing that the Lakers can be a postseason threat.
Their winning streak included wins over eight teams with winning records. Their last four losses — to the Magic on Feb. 24, at Phoenix on Feb. 26, at Denver on March 5 and Monday in Detroit — have come by a total of 14 points. They’re in control of their destiny in the Western Conference when it comes to the No. 3 seed, owning tiebreakers against Denver, Houston and Minnesota.
It all left the Lakers sounding confident, even though they couldn’t get past the Cade Cunningham-less Pistons on Monday.
“There were a couple games (during the streak) where we got down,” LeBron James said. “A couple games that we got up, teams made a run, took leads, and we were able to stay resilient and come back. So we’re a tough-minded (group).
“Even with tonight, we got down again versus a very good team on their home floor. Obviously, they had probably been waiting on this matchup. It’s been a long road trip for us, so for us to still be able to have it be a one-possession game coming down the stretch, that’s what you can look forward to.”
An “almost” win might not seem like much in a vacuum, but that’s not how an NBA season works. The Lakers, playing their fifth road game in eight days, fought through fatigue. They didn’t balk and succumb to previous bad habits.
“I think where we were earlier in the year, all of us, probably the coaching staff included, was like, when things go bad, you revert back to your means of self-preservation, whatever that may look like for each individual,” Redick said pregame.
In Monday’s loss, Luka Dončić dove into the first row to save a loose ball. Reaves rebounded from a slow start. James didn’t score in the first half for just the third time in his career, but he never felt out of the game (he finished one rebound shy of a triple-double). Deandre Ayton made big plays down the stretch. All were done within the context of the team’s plan, and all were done out of habit.
“In order for us to win ball games, it’s the role that I’m playing,” James said of the scoreless half — his first in more than 15 years. “And that’s just how the game was going.”
His statement wasn’t passive-aggressive; it was matter-of-fact.
“We’re a good basketball team,” Redick said. “I believe that we’re a good basketball team. I thought we could be a good basketball team the entire season. We saw flashes of it. We saw short stretches of it, but we’re a good basketball team, and I think we have to continue to play together and all that stuff.”
If the last 10 games were about proving the Lakers are a quality team, the challenge over the final 10 regular-season games will be maintaining that level of play while physically preparing for the playoffs. Reaves, Dončić and James have all been on the injury report over the past week, and all three played through whatever had been bothering them. Both Marcus Smart and Rui Hachimura missed Monday’s game and are considered day to day, but Redick doesn’t sound like a coach in a hurry to get players back.
What the last 10 games showed him is that if the Lakers are whole, they’re a scary basketball team.
“Not having Smart tonight killed us,” Redick said. “That’s important for us, that we can get healthy and we can play our rotation. Post-Luke (Kennard) trade, I think when all nine guys have played, we’ve been a good basketball team. And I think (Jarred Vanderbilt) did a great job tonight. When he had his minutes, he was ready to play.
“But the way our team works, you need Smart for his ballhandling, you need Smart for his defense, you need Rui for his shooting. Those pieces are important to complement everybody. And, you know, we need to finish the season strong, but we also need to finish the season healthy.”
