The Lakers played the kind of defense Tuesday night against the San Antonio Spurs that would have made fired coach Mike Brown proud.
They played the sort of offense that would have made new coach Mike D'Antoni cringe.
In what might have been their final game in the transition period between old coach and new one, the Lakers lost a nerve-jangling 84-82 decision to the Spurs in front of a sellout crowd of 18,997 at Staples Center.
San Antonio's Danny Green swished the go-ahead 3-pointer over Kobe Bryant with 9.3 seconds remaining. Pau Gasol missed a 3-pointer at the other end and the Lakers couldn't control the rebound before the final buzzer sounded.
"I think we did a lot of good things," Gasol said after the Lakers held the Spurs to only 38.9 percent shooting (35 of 90), but still fell to 2-1 under interim coach Bernie Bickerstaff and to 3-5 overall.
Putting the ball into Bryant's capable hands on their final possession was not one of them, however. Metta World Peace inbounded the ball to Gasol in the right corner rather than waiting for Bryant to break free on the perimeter.
Bryant scored a team-leading 28 points on 12-for-19 shooting and added four rebounds and eight assists. He wasn't happy with World Peace at game's end, talking to him in an animated fashion after the buzzer.
"I wasn't frustrated," Bryant later told reporters. "It was a (mistake)."
Of the go-ahead jump shot from Green, Bryant
added, "I don't think there was too much confusion. Green hit a big, big shot. He shot 4 for 12, but he had the guts to take that shot. It was a tough one, a contested shot and he knocked it down."Dwight Howard scored 13 points on 5-for-9 shooting and grabbed a team-leading 15 rebounds. World Peace added 12 points on 4-for-14 shooting and Gasol had 10 points on 3-for-10 shooting and also had 10 rebounds and five assists.
The Lakers shot 41.9 percent (31 of 74) and had 17 turnovers.
After relatively crisp and clean victories over undersized and overmatched Golden State and Sacramento in their first two games after Brown was fired Friday morning, the Lakers were as disjointed as ever Wednesday.
"We did a good job defensively," Bickerstaff said. "We didn't finish the plays."
Tony Parker scored 19 points and added seven assists, but he didn't hurt the Lakers down the stretch because Bickerstaff used an unorthodox lineup in which Bryant was the only guard on the floor.
Tim Duncan added 18 points for the Spurs (7-1). Green scored 11 points, and didn't hesitate on his go-ahead 3-pointer.
Locked in a defensive struggle in the fourth quarter, and playing without starting point guard Steve Nash or backup Steve Blake because of leg and abdominal injuries, Bickerstaff decided to try something unusual.
Bickerstaff kept point guard Darius Morris, a second-year player making his first start, and backup Chris Duhon on the bench in favor of a lineup of Bryant, Gasol, Howard, World Peace and Antawn Jamison.
"I thought with Metta on Parker, they didn't get much going there at the end of the game," Bickerstaff said. "In the past, we've always thought about putting a bigger guy on Parker to make him shoot over the defense."
Bickerstaff gave it a try because, well, why the heck not? This was probably his final game as the Lakers' interim coach, with today scheduled as a day off and Thursday expected to be D'Antoni's first day on the job.
Morris scored only one point on 0-for-5 shooting with two rebounds and one assist in 20 minutes, 46 seconds. Duhon had five points on 2-for-4 shooting with three assists in 19:23.
At times, Bryant seemed to be coaching Morris as they came up the court together. In the end, it seemed easier for Bryant to take over the role of point guard and add that to his job description.
"I missed the Steves because a lot of times you saw me initiating the offense and setting up plays for others," Bryant said of Nash and Blake.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/ci_21992674/san-antonio-84-lakers-82-l-suffers-loss?source=rss_viewed
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