Key Highlights
- The battles that once typified this rivalry are long gone.
- Now, this team's future sat on the bench, adorned in expensive clothes, watching the future blur past in a red and black streak. The math was simple, the execution a complex failure.
- No Luka Dončić.
- No Austin Reaves. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe equation should have demanded defense, desperation, hustle and heart. Instead, the Los Angeles Lakers offered a Ted Talk in modern emptiness: a 132-116 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers, where the only compelling statistic was the chilling glimpse it provided of the abyss. The 55 points Los Angeles got from its bench glow like the intoxicating light that attracts bugs right before they're zapped, like a neon lie in the rainy Pacific Northwest night. Drew Timme's career-high 21 points, Maxi Kleber's steady presence, the scattered sparks from reserves—they were souvenirs from a sinking ship. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe Lakers lost by 16, but the real deficit is metaphysical. We are getting glimpses of what a team built around a 41-year-old veteran, in LeBron James, looks like.
- It looks slow.
