Road warriors is not a phrase you’d use to describe the Lakers, but now that they are back home they have a chance to rest before they leave Los Angeles for more games.
This season has featured the Lakers being more on the road than at home.
L.A. has played 11 games at home compared to 13 on the road. Only the Dallas Mavericks have played more road games in the Western Conference, playing in 14 matchups away from home.
The Lakers have had two long road trips and their most recent one was a struggle. They won just one of the four games they played away from Los Angeles.
Spending so much time on the road is less than ideal and even rookie Dalton Knecht noticed how it negatively impacted the team.
“I think it definitely, not having all these home games kind of affected us,” Knecht said after the team’s home win versus the Blazers. “But also, at the same time, we should have won some games that we lost. So at the end of the day, we just got to keep going out there and watching our film and trying to get better and learn.”
Back home, the Lakers dominated a struggling Blazers team, winning 107-98.
Knecht was a bit cold offensively, going 3-9 from the field, but he crashed the boards well, grabbing eight rebounds in the win. Only Anthony Davis had more rebounds than Knecht for the Lakers in this game.
Being road warriors is a challenge, but winning just 38% of their games away from L.A. will not cut it for the Lakers. The team was just under .500 on the road the past two seasons. The last time they were this bad away from home was the 2021-22 campaign when they only won 29% of their road games. The Lakers missed the playoffs that year and won just 33 games.
With over 25% of the NBA season done, there is still plenty of time to fix L.A.’s road woes. The team is currently at home and focused on rest and recovery while NBA Cup action takes place.
Their next contest versus the Wolves on Friday is on the road, so they’ll have an opportunity to demonstrate that this record is not a sign of a season-long struggle but a small sample size that reflects some challenging games they had to play while short-handed.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.
