The fixture list has a funny way of setting things up and a clash between the LA Lakers and Charlotte Hornets certainly had a little more on it after a recent failed trade deal.
Hornets center Mark Williams was due to join the Lakers before failing a late fitness test.
This resulted in Lakers Dalton Knecht having to return from the Hornets which led to some awkward conversations for the rookie who has been urged by Paul George to move on from the situation.
Despite the Lakers being major favourites against their lowly Eastern Conference opponents all did not go to plan as they came up against Williams.
LeBron James plays down Williams difference
The Lakers fell to their second straight defeat following a narrow 97-100 loss against the Hornets, despite their opponents shooting at just 36%.
Luka Doncic is now off of his minutes cap and dropped a 14-11-8 display but Kendrick Perkins has suggested it may take weeks before the Lakers fans see the best of their new star.
LaMelo Ball was the true star of the evening with his 27-5-6 showing, it left many fans further questioning how he did not get a place in the All-Star game.
Williams also showed the Lakers what they could have had as he dropped 10 points alongside 9 rebounds, and LeBron explained how it was no different seeing him in a Hornets jersey.
He said: “He was never a teammate, he never stepped foot in the locker room. We know that the trade went down but we never seen him so it got back to exactly what it was before, it’s no different.”
Redick critical of Lakers offense
Despite their opponents making just 36.3% of their field goal attempts the Lakers did not fair much better with 41.1%.
The side also took an unusual amount of three-point attempts with 51, they only made 15 of them.
While LeBron dropped another 26 points the rest of the Lakers’ offense struggled, they were especially poor when Austin Reaves was ejected from the game, his shooting was a huge miss.
JJ Redick said: “I don’t think it was just Austin but that certainly hurt us. Overall we played 39-44 minutes of pretty poor offense and some of that is to be expected. Some of it is sloppyness, some of it is poor spacing, some poor execution. The reason I’m not going to read much into that is because I think our guys competed tonight and played extremely hard.”
The Lakers’ offense will certainly need to up their game when they take on the Portland Trail Blazers in their next game, they need to snap their losing streak as they head towards an important part of the season with the playoffs looming.