blowout loss to the San Antonio Spurs<\/a>. Despite that, they\u2019re not sweating it much because head coach JJ Redick and the team believe they\u2019ve been playing better for most of the last six games. The stats prove Redick\u2019s point, but it remains unclear whether this is just an anomaly or something that will persist moving forward.<\/p>\nThe good news is it\u2019ll be easy to tell whether the Lakers are indeed playing better in their matchup against the Bucks on Friday. Milwaukee, which is surprisingly the 11th seed, is coming off a tough loss against the Golden State Warriors. They\u2019re 7-12 in road games this season and have yet to win three games in a row. In short, they\u2019re as mediocre as it gets.<\/p>\n
Frankly speaking, the Lakers should be able to handle the Bucks. Despite their flawed defense \u2014 which now ranks 21st in the league \u2014 they should be able to expose Milwaukee\u2019s offense, which averages just 113.3 points per game. The Bucks are also a horrible rebounding team and don\u2019t really score inside the paint, ranking dead last in the league in paint touches (17.7).<\/p>\n
What Milwaukee is very good at is 3-point shooting and, of course, depending on their superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo, who delivers on most nights. Antetokounmpo is currently averaging 29.5 points, 10 rebounds and 5.5. assists per game. The key to beating the Bucks is to limit the Greek Freak\u2019s production and hope they don\u2019t shoot extremely well from downtown. It\u2019s important that the Lakers\u2019 offense overshadows theirs.<\/p>\n
For that to happen, Luka Don\u010di\u0107 will obviously have to play well. The same goes with LeBron James \u2014 who is currently listed as questionable \u2014 if he is able to suit up. For as long as Austin Reaves is out, these two superstars can\u2019t have many bad games if the Lakers want to win.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, Deandre Ayton bounces back from his lackluster performance last game because he\u2019s going to have his hands full with Antetokounmpo inside the paint. This one will also be a battle between which supporting cast shows up and, for the Lakers, it\u2019ll be nice to see Jake LaRavia and Marcus Smart continue to set the tone.<\/p>\n
With a relatively beatable opponent coming into the building, it\u2019s important that the Lakers capitalize and get back to playing consistent winning basketball. Let\u2019s see if they can win the season series against Antetokounmpo and the Bucks on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers (23-12) are back home after a quick two-game road trip as they take on the Milwaukee…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526621,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,4034,1698,300,4044,251,150,64012,4033,4043,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-526620","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-la","10":"tag-la-lakers","11":"tag-lakers","12":"tag-lalakers","13":"tag-los-angeles","14":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","15":"tag-los-angeles-lakers-discussion","16":"tag-losangeles","17":"tag-losangeleslakers","18":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115863654579618362","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526620","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526620"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526620\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}