NEW YORK \u2013\u2013 The first half was a delicate, deceptive promise crafted in the hallowed haze of Madison Square Garden. Ticket prices soared past $500 for nosebleeds, into the thousands for courtside.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Spike Lee wore his Knicks jersey like armor. Tracy Morgan sat nearby, laughing at jokes only he understood.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The debut of NBC’s “Sunday Night Basketball” package demanded a show, and Madison Square Garden always delivers.<\/p>\n
The Lakers’ zone defense flummoxed the Knicks. LeBron James, just hours after being named to a record 22nd All-Star team, moved with purposeful grace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luka Don\u010di\u0107 piled up stats with casual brilliance. The Lakers led at halftime, 56-52.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They had played well\u2014Don\u010di\u0107 bullying his way to 30 points, 15 rebounds, eight assists; James reminding everyone why coaches voted him to his NBA-record 22nd consecutive All-Star Game; the defense rotating, the offense humming.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hope lived. Hope always lives at halftime.<\/p>\n
Then the third quarter began, and hope died.<\/p>\n
The Knicks scored a 38-point deluge, including a 15-5 run to close the quarter, in the third. The Lakers mustered 26.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is a 12-point differential that felt like 30. It is the same story, the same sin, the same self-inflicted wound that has doomed this Lakers season.<\/p>\n
Transition baskets leaked. Offensive rebounds were surrendered.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Threes rained down from Shamet, from Brunson, from Anunoby.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lakers’ lead dissolved, then inverted, swallowed whole by a 90-82 deficit they would never recover from, culminating in a 112-100 defeat.<\/p>\n
It is the same story, the same sin, the same self-inflicted wound that has doomed this Lakers season.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles did not just have a bad quarter. It was the quarter. The one that has become a haunting, recurring echo in the Lakers’ season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The third quarter. The bogeyman. The black hole.<\/p>\n
“We couldn’t consistently make shots from the perimeter,” James said. “Extra possessions\u2014they got extra possessions, they kicked out for threes and knocked them down. I think that was the game right there.”<\/p>\n
The numbers are a damning indictment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Knicks made 11-of-23 from deep. The Lakers made a paltry 2-of-14.<\/p>\n
That is not a disparity; it is an entirely different sport.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Landry Shamet, a bench player, hit three triples in that decisive quarter. OG Anunoby, the defensive stopper, hit one. Jalen Brunson, the Knicks’ engine, hit another.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Garden roared, and the Lakers, per usual when faced with adversity, shrank.<\/p>\n
New York snatched 15 offensive rebounds, a relentless barrage of second chances that broke the Lakers’ spirit and their scheme.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“They made 11 of them. We were two of 14,” head coach JJ Redick said. “The shooting\u2026 their shooting killed us and our shooting didn’t help us.”<\/p>\n
“We miss a lot of good looks,” Don\u010di\u0107 said.” They made some great looks.”<\/p>\n
But this is not about a mere cold streak. The Lakers’ lack of energy, effort and identity is alarming.<\/p>\n
The Knicks played with a desperate, physical hunger. The Lakers played as spectators.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Josh Hart hunted loose balls. Anunoby turned defense into instant offense. The Lakers, meanwhile, seemed to wait for Don\u010di\u0107 or James to conjure a rescue that never came.<\/p>\n
The third quarter has become the Lakers’ personal horror film, the monster that keeps jumping out no matter how many times they think they’ve killed it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Against Cleveland, they surrendered 42 points. Against Washington, they gave up a 29-point lead’s ghost in three minutes of “abomination,” as Redick called it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Against New York, it happened again\u2014a possession here, a turnover there, a missed rotation, a blown box-out. Death by a thousand cuts, all delivered in 12 minutes.<\/p>\n
New York was the aggressor; Los Angeles played as if they were cruising on a Malibu\u00a0<\/p>\n
The demoralization was complete. For the first time all season, the Lakers lost a game they led at halftime, a stark 17-0 record now stained. The defeat dropped them to 9-11 against teams above .500, a record that whispers “pretender” in a Western Conference gauntlet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After starting out red hot, the Lakers are struggling against good teams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Both Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder could see it, too.<\/p>\n
In the locker room, the acknowledgment was blunt, pointed inward. Deandre Ayton, who managed 13 points and 5 rebounds, pinpointed the fatal flaw.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Coming out in the second half, they were making shots and we were missing ours,” Ayton said. “You bring the MSG fans involved, it’s going to sound like a playoff game.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
He confirmed the team had confronted the third-quarter issue directly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We definitely pointed that out\u2026 it’s one of our things we need to pick up,” Ayton said.<\/p>\n
The absence of Austin Reaves, missing a 19th straight game, was a phantom limb. His 26.5 points per game and his playmaking verve are a glaring void during those stagnant, scoreless stretches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There have been a few too many times when the offense has just fallen flat for 7, 8 minutes. Reaves represents the offensive safety valve the Lakers have desperately lacked.<\/p>\n
Now, the questions loom larger, darker.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The trade deadline whispers grow louder. The standings grow tighter\u2014a slide to seventh in the West is a very real possibility. The road trip ends in Brooklyn, a chance to salvage a 5-3 record, but the damage is psychic as much as statistical.<\/p>\n
“We want to continue to try to build,” James said. “It’s a tough Western Conference\u2026 it’s been tough all season.<\/p>\n
But the toughest opponent, the most consistent foe, is the one that emerges from their own locker room after halftime. The third quarter.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A period of play that has transformed from a strategic interval into a psychological chasm.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Lakers can diagnose it. They can discuss it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But as the Garden’s lights dimmed on another failed promise, the terrifying truth remained: they have yet to solve it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The curse of the third quarter lives on, and with it, the ceiling on their season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013\u2013 The first half was a delicate, deceptive promise crafted in the hallowed haze of Madison…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[1013,7,1586,4034,1698,300,4044,185,251,150,4033,4043,368,6,67,4536],"class_list":{"0":"post-577137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-lakers","8":"tag-austin-reaves","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-deandre-ayton","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-la-lakers","13":"tag-lakers","14":"tag-lalakers","15":"tag-lebron-james","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","18":"tag-losangeles","19":"tag-losangeleslakers","20":"tag-luka-doncic","21":"tag-nba","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-tst-los-angeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577137","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=577137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}