Anthony Davis issued Lakers challenge to not lose consecutive games this season
After dropping their first game of the season to the Suns on Monday, Anthony Davis revealed his challenge for the Lakers this year is to not lose back-to-back games.
In the Lakers’ 2019-20 title-winning season, one of the handful of challenges the team had was not to lose back-to-back games during the regular season. It was a challenge that spoke to the goals and focus of that team.
Predictably, they failed to achieve that goal. Still, they lost consecutive games just three times that season.
That alone didn’t make the Lakers win a title, but it set a tone for the season. On Monday, the Lakers dropped their first game of the season to the Suns. After the contest, Anthony Davis revealed that he issued the same challenge to this year’s version of the purple and gold.
“Nobody in history has went 82-0,” Davis said. “We don’t expect to lose but we’re realists. Realistically, we were probably going to lose a game. Obviously, we didn’t want to start off with the first loss on this [road] trip but it happened. I liked the way guys competed. We played extremely hard.
“We bounce back against a Cleveland team…another team that’s playing extremely well. We got to go win and try to not lose two in a row. I’m giving a challenge for us all year [to] never lose two in a row.”
In that 2019-20 season, the Lakers went as far as losing four games in a row in the middle of the season. However, prior to the league halting in March, they only had one other instance of losing back-to-back games. They had one more three-game losing streak in the bubble before the playoffs, but those games feel like a fever dream anyway.
Again, the Lakers did not win the title because of this challenge, but it’s the mindset and approach that helped shape them into title contenders, which is something LeBron James discussed as well.
“You just want to be able to bounce back and not let the snowball turn into an avalanche when it comes to the loss column,” LeBron said. “We’re in the process of still getting to know our system, still getting to know each other out on the floor but we want to be able to not let losses come in bunches. We look forward to the next matchup.”
It won’t be an easy challenge for the Lakers on Wednesday as they travel to Cleveland to face an undefeated Cavaliers team. And more challenges like that will arise this season.
The Lakers almost certainly won’t go the entire season not losing back-to-back games. They’re realists, as AD said, and they know that’s the case. But if the team can adapt the mindset that the 2019-20 title team had, they’ll be heading in the right direction.
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