Los Angeles Lakers: 3 takeaways from Lakers loss in season debut

2. Rough start for Brook Lopez

The Los Angeles Lakers bringing in Brook Lopez was seen as an overall all-around improvement for the team. He is typically underrated as a defender, can score lights out on any given night and has added a pretty threatening 3-ball to his repertoire late in his career. He had the task of manning DeAndre Jordan which is no easy task for any night let alone an excited crowd with their expectations perhaps a bit too high for opening night.

Brook Lopez played 28 minutes and scored 20 points on an rough night of 7-for-19 shooting 36.8 percent from the field. His soft touch floater game was off tonight as he kept undershooting and hitting the front of the rim. He was ice cold from beyond the arc as well hitting just 1-of-5 attempts, although his one make came from the corner. It is nice to see him not get discouraged and keep firing away. Typically he did very well on his pull up jumpers from beyond the arc in transition but on opening night Lopez could not avoid his shots from bricking.

He was mediocre on defense while trying to contain either Blake Griffin or DeAndre Jordan on the inside and had the second best plus/minus on the team with a -1. He was simply overpowered by Jordan who scored 14 points and grabbed 24 rebounds.

Expect to see much more from Brook Lopez going forward as well as a higher volume of corner 3-pointers. His 20 points on an inconsistent 36.8 percent shooting made this game closer then it should have been.