EDINBURG, Tex. -- Despite shooting 55.4% from the field and nearly 50% from beyond-the-arc, the South Bay Lakers collapsed in crunch time on the road against the Rio Grande Valley Vipers on Tuesday.
The loss marked South Bay’s second consecutive loss, both to Rio Grande, and fourth in their last five games. The loss of their stars to the parent team, notably Drew Timme and Kobe Bufkin, continues to take a toll.
The Lakers were led offensively by R.J. Davis with 24 points, and received a boost late from 22-year-old guard Zach Hicks, who they just acquired today from the NBA G League Player pool. Hicks didn’t take long to cash in on his opportunity, burying five triples in his debut, four of which came in the fourth quarter.
Arthur Kaluma, Augustas Marčiulionis and Anton Watson pitched in with 17, 14 and 14 points respectively, to round out the majority of South Bay’s scoring.
Entering the fourth quarter, South Bay only trailed by a single point.
After some back-and-forth to start the period, the Lakers went on an 8-0 run off of two triples from Hicks and a Marčiulionis fastbreak layup off of a steal, bringing their lead to seven points at 113-106 with 6:43 remaining, leading to a Viper timeout.
Out of the timeout, Rio Grande went on a 10-0 run to retake the lead. The teams would trade the lead a few more times, with triples raining from both sides of the court, before the Vipers’ Daishen Nix (21 points) tied the game, Isaiah Crawford (17 points) gave them the lead, and free throws from SF Tristen Newton, which gave him a game high 32 points, sealed the deal.
Though they shot better than their opponent, South Bay lost a lot of the little battles in Tuesday night’s game that they were better with earlier on this season.
Rio Grande turned the Lakers over 21 times total, including 13 steals, compared to the Lakers’ five steals and 12 forced turnovers. They’re certainly missing the on-ball defensive pressure from guys like Bronny James Jr. and Adou Thiero.
The Vipers out-rebounded the Lakers 45-38 in the contest, including a one-handed Crawford rebound to seal the game with seven seconds remaining, when the Lakers could’ve had a chance to tie or take the lead. Not having Drew Timme, a guy who averaged nearly eight rebounds a game, certainly would’ve helped in that situation.
Most importantly, South Bay was outscored 10-0 in the final 2:05 of the game. Having the clutch scoring abilities of Kobe Bufkin or Nick Smith Jr. in that situation surely would’ve helped them to battle back.
The Lakers played the Vipers very well in their last two outings, and lost both of those games. This current South Bay squad with RJ Davis as the number option, and no consistent second or third option, has a very evident ceiling of playing teams tough, but not being able to close.
Obviously, losing their star players to the parent team has hurt them. Bufkin and Timme both led the entire G League in scoring when they were called up for the first time. South Bay is 10-2 when Timme plays for them this season.
As Coach Zach Guthrie has pointed out though, that is the goal for this team, to build players up so that they can be called up eventually, and having this many call-ups shows he has done a darn good job at it.
But with that comes that challenge that he says makes the G League unique, being able to figure it out as a coach, and take this current team, without those superstar 20+ points per game scorers, and still find success and be competitive.
He will keep trying to figure it out as the Lakers will have a much needed five game home stand coming up to try and end their losing streak.
Now sitting at 5-5, they will brace for a two game series with the Western conference’s number one seeded Mexico City Capitanes, with tip-off set for 7:00 p.m. on Thursday night at the UHTC.