CHICAGO — As he sat in a chair inside of the NBA visitor’s locker room at the United Center with a ripped-up box score in his hands, Lakers star LeBron James tried explaining the “devastation,” as Coach JJ Redick put it, that the team had just experienced.
Three times he acknowledged with reporters that the Lakers put themselves in a position to beat the Chicago Bulls on Thursday night before being stunned by Josh Giddey’s buzzer-beating half-court heave to give the Lakers their eighth loss in their last 12 games.
James also explained the best way he sees dealing with the emotions from a loss like Thursday’s, bringing up the Lakers’ trip-ending game against the Memphis Grizzlies on Saturday, a matchup with significant Western Conference playoff seeding ramifications.
“That’s the NBA,” James said. “You can’t go into a game on Saturday thinking about what happened on Thursday.”
But Thursday’s loss wasn’t an ordinary loss.
Especially after being on the favorable end of a buzzer-beater the previous night when James’ tip-in as time expired gave them a victory over the Indiana Pacers and ended the Lakers’ three-game losing streak.
There was optimism that Wednesday’s thrilling win could give the Lakers the boost they needed to finish out the last 2½ weeks of the regular season strong.
“Sometimes your group just needs a win,” Redick said before Thursday’s game.
It looked like the Lakers were on their way to another victory for most of the game against the Bulls.
They flipped the script on their recent third-quarter woes for at least one game, playing their best defense of the night immediately after halftime. They won the third 32-17 and had an 18-point lead early in the fourth (96-78).
But the Bulls got hot from there, knocking down seven 3-pointers in eight minutes to cut the Lakers’ lead to four (107-103).
And for the second night in a row, the Lakers appeared to take their foot off the gas, blowing another late lead.
But unlike Wednesday night in Indianapolis, the Lakers didn’t overcome their late mistakes, despite Austin Reaves scoring six points in the final 27 seconds, including a layup that gave the Lakers a one-point lead with three seconds left.
And the Bulls made them pay with one of the more improbable shots of the season.
“It sucks,” Reaves said. “We probably had a high percentage chance of winning after my layup went in. There [aren’t] many half-court buzzer-beaters to lose a game. It’s frustrating.”
But as Redick put it, the Lakers aren’t in a position to feel sorry for themselves.
They came out of Thursday’s loss with a 44-29 record and sat in fourth place in the Western Conference standings.
Their next game is against the team right below them in the standings, the Grizzlies (also 44-29).
The playoff implications of Saturday’s matchup will likely be significant, with both teams having just eight games left entering the season’s final two weeks.
The Lakers suffered buzzer-beating losses two other times this season: a Nov. 21 home loss to the Orlando Magic and a Dec. 6 road loss to the Atlanta Hawks.
They lost six of eight games after the loss to the Magic, including the aforementioned loss to the Hawks. They also won eight of their following 11 games after the loss to the Hawks.
With very little time left in the season, how the Lakers respond to Thursday’s stinging defeat could have a significant impact on their playoff outlook.
“We’ll learn from it,” Reaves said. “At this point of the year, you just got to forget about it, honestly. There’s so little basketball left. But at the same time, if we want to get to where we want to get to, we can’t sit here and dwell on that. We got to continue to focus on getting better every day and giving ourselves the best opportunity in the playoffs.”
LAKERS AT GRIZZLIES
When: Saturday, 5 p.m. PT
Where: FedExForum, Memphis, Tenn.
TV/radio: Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM