After winning a thriller in the play-in against the Warriors, the Lakers made their playoff debut on Sunday in Game 1 against the Suns, and if anyone looked rusty, it was the Lakers. L.A. had a dismal shooting afternoon as a team, posting a rather awful 43.4/26/9/60.7 shooting split as a team in a 99-90 loss to the Suns, who got massive contributions from playoff debutants Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton in a 99-90 win.
While few on the Lakers played well, the performance that stood out as especially poor came from Anthony Davis, who had just 13 points and seven rebounds in 39 minutes of play. Davis was 5-of-16 from the field, including going 0-for-2 from deep, and just generally looked disengaged from the action for most of his time on the court. Afterwards, Davis took the blame for the Lakers loss, noting that he can’t play like that if they’re going to win games, much less a series.
Anthony Davis shoulders the blame for the Game 1 loss: "No way we're winning a game, let alone a series, with me playing the way I played. This one is on me."
— Ryan Ward (@RyanWardLA) May 23, 2021
Davis is right, and it’s not the first time he’s had a game where he all but disappears. Last year, once he got it going in the playoffs he was the unstoppable force the Lakers needed him to be, and we’ll just have to see if he can find that gear soon enough in this series. The good news for L.A. is that they’ve done this before, coming out flat in a Game 1 before making the requisite adjustments to steamroll through a series. That said, doing so against this Suns team will be more difficult than, say, last year’s Portland squad, and Phoenix wasn’t exactly operating at full strength in this one after Chris Paul suffered the shoulder injury that caused him to almost completely avoid shooting for the final three quarters.
