Lakers Vs. Magic: Los Angeles Struggles Throughout, Can’t Recover In 92-80 Loss

The Magic go to 11-4 on the season, while the Lakers fall to 10-7. By the way, Kobe put on this great performance with no help from his teammates on a day he lost $75 million.

For more on the Lakers, be sure to visit Silver Screen and Roll. The best Magic community on the web can be found at Orlando Pinstriped Post. For more on the basketball world in general, check out SB Nation’s NBA page.

I’d be okay calling Friday night’s matchup between the Orlando Magic and Los Angeles Lakers at the half. Just end it now, and we can all go on our merry way. It’s lockout ball, which is bad enough, but it’s also televised nationally on ESPN. This is not an advertisement for the game.

Whatever the reason -- likely tired legs after enduring long stretches of games -- the baeketball has been flat bad. The Lakers scored 10 points in the first quarter, and it hasn’t gotten much better. Midway through the second, Los Angeles finally trended above a projected final score of 40, but just barely. And the shooting? Oh, the shooting.

The main storyline will likely be about how Dwight Howard has a trade request in with Bryant and the Lakers appearing near the top of an ever-growing list, but Los Angeles has bigger fish to fry (as does Kobe himself, it seems). Silver Screen and Roll’s Dexter Fishmore decided that new head coach Mike Brown’s offense might be the Lakers problem, however, following their slower than usual start:

Obviously adding Howard to the scheme could certainly help things, but it’ll be interesting to watch and see if Brown alters his offense at all against the Magic -- or if the Lakers pull off a real deadline deal and acquire Howard prior to the game (that’d be fun, right?).

As far as the Magic are concerned, Howard has quite a bit to prove as he faces off against Bynum and the Lakers. Howard, the league’s most dominant big man, has a standing trade request on the table with the Lakers being near the top of his intended destinations. The Orlando media made mention of that quite a bit this week as Howard would be following in the footsteps of Shaquille O’Neal as franchise centers leaving Florida for California in the prime of their careers.

For more on the Lakers, be sure to visit Silver Screen and Roll. The best Magic community on the web can be found at Orlando Pinstriped Post. For more on the basketball world in general, check out SB Nation’s NBA page.