Lakers Get Shut Down By San Antonio

San Antonio proved way too much for the Lakers, who played catch up all night long.

Los Angeles hopefully got a strong wake up call following their loss to the San Antonio Spurs on Friday night.

Despite Kobe Bryant‘s poor outing and measly five points, the team did get a sense of urgency from up-and-coming faces.

Lou Williams and Jordan Clarkson dropped 16 points a piece, Roy Hibbert threw in ten points in a surprising performance, and D’Angelo Russell exploded to lead the team with 18 points off the bench.

That’s a good sign for the Lakers, if nothing else.

Julius Randle was also a big factor in the loss, dropping 12 points and grabbing 14 rebounds.

For the Lakers to succeed in the near future, they need to build off of Julius Randle and make sure they are developing where he needs them to grow.

Letting Randle do his thing on the boards is the best strategy for Byron Scott to adopt and clearly, despite losing, is the route they need to take to create progress.

That is what this season ended up being about, right?

For the Spurs, Kawhi Leonard continued being a special force, leading his team with 18 points of his own.

Off the bench for San Antonio, Manu Ginobli turned out to be the biggest difference maker, throwing down 20 points, four rebounds, and four assists in just 19 minutes.

After ending the first quarter up nine points already, the Spurs never had time to look back — and the Lakers couldn’t keep pace no matter how hard they tried.

Tim Duncan and Tony Parker combined for only 14 points and four rebounds and the Spurs were still dominant throughout.

If that wasn’t a message to the rest of the conference to be wary when you play the Spurs, I’m not sure what is.

The majority of this season has been drowned in the news surrounding Golden State’s epic start to the season — but the Spurs are right there behind the defending champs.

And, if we’re honest, the Lakers played much better than we had collectively expected them to play against a six loss team like San Antonio.

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The Spurs have their concerns and sights on the other team from Los Angeles, the Clippers, who meanwhile went into Madison Square Garden and had a field day with the New York Knicks.

In that game, DeAndre Jordan was the real star, but the overall message on the mind of most of the Spurs, if not all of them, is what they’re going to do if they have to play the Clippers.

So for them, going up against the Lakers was probably their definition of a warm up.

D’Angelo Russell continues to improve on his own, though, despite the woes of the team.

You can’t ask for much more from the rookie, because in the end, Russell knows that he’ll get better with time.

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And he knows full well that he won’t be able to carry the team’s weight on his shoulders alone.