It was only one game, sure, but the Los Angeles Lakers might be in trouble. The Lakers fell to the Portland Trail Blazers, 100-93, in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series Tuesday, as Damian Lillard scored a game-high 34 points.
Should Lakers fans be worried? In a word, yes.
“This Lakers team is in trouble because it’s got a fight on its hands with the Blazers,” Damon Amendolara said on The DA Show. “They got something that other teams might not: they believe. And they’ve got a reason to believe. When the season began, if you played 82 games of an NBA regular season without a pandemic and the Blazers are healthy, there ain’t no way in hell they’re an 8-seed. They’re a 3, a 4 or a 5. They’re no worse than that – and they’re probably more like a 3 or a 4. They’ve got no business being an 8-seed in the playoffs. And in this – a neutral-site bubble – they’re not really an 8-seed. It’s not a good situation for the Lakers.”
D.A. picked the Lakers to win the West, but Los Angeles has lost six of its last eight games in the bubble. The Lakers, quite simply, look lost.
“I think overall they actually are the best team in the West, but this matchup in the first round is terrible,” Amendolara said. “They’re just catching the Blazers at the wrong time because they don’t have their rhythm yet. They haven’t gone through a full playoff series yet to kind of find their way, figure out how they can be back to playing the way that they did before the shutdown, and the Blazers are just in a crazy rhythm with a crazy player that right now is playing out of his mind. Dame Lillard did it again last night."
Lillard is averaging 42.5 points over his last six games and has been, without question, the best player in Orlando.
“It’s just a bad situation for the Lakers,” Amendolara said. “Bad timing, bad opponent, bad situation. Hell yeah the Lakers are in trouble. Yes, they could lose this series. . . . Watching Lillard since the restart has been nothing short of remarkable, and you should get on board. He is just all sorts of fun.”