Los Angeles Lakers come up short in opener; 3 takeaways

1. LBJ-AD combo gets off to good start, fades down the stretch

After the Los Angeles Lakers traded for Anthony Davis, the NBA season couldn’t get here soon enough, as fans couldn’t wait to see how well the superstars would mesh when the games started to count. All went according to plan during the first 24 minutes of action.

Davis scored 18 points, connecting on five of his 11 attempts from the floor and he shot 8-for-12 from the charity stripe. LeBron James chipped in with a stat line of 14 points, four rebounds and four assists.

In the second half, however, it was a completely different story, as the dynamic duo struggled against the Clippers D. James did finish with a near triple-double (18 points, nine rebounds and eight assists) but he shot 7-for-19 from the field.

After a solid opening half, Davis shot just 3-for-10 from the floor the rest of the way. Yes, he did put up 25 points (along with an impressive 10 rebounds and five assists), but he needed 21 shot attempts to do so. All in all, the pair combined for 43 points on 15-for-40 shooting (37.5 percent).

Simply put, that kind of effort from your team’s star players will not get the job done. On the flip side of the narrative, although this was a season-opening tilt between two teams expected to compete for conference supremacy, it’s still just one game out of 82.

James and Davis are capable of playing better than they did in this contest and they will prove as much as the season progresses.