LeBron-less Lakers no match for Suns

The last month of the Lakers’ season has, at times, felt like a MacGyver-style operation, using the tools they have to survive.

On Sunday night, some promising tools emerged: Montrezl Harrell’s rolls and putbacks; Dennis Schröder’s speed and pressure; Talen Horton-Tucker’s crafty drives and finishes. It could always be worse.

But absent their most productive and versatile player, survival is going to be a much tougher prospect in the unforgiving wilderness of the Western Conference.

In their first game since LeBron James suffered a high-ankle sprain that is likely to sideline him for weeks, the Lakers (28-15) clawed but could not overcome Phoenix in a 111-94 defeat at Talking Stick Arena. The Suns (28-13) are technically just one spot ahead in the standings, but now tower over their division rivals who are playing the foreseeable future without their stars, with Anthony Davis’ absence stretching past a month.

Coach Frank Vogel kept an upbeat tone despite the grim circumstances that have the defending champions sailing into a challenging gamut ahead.

“We didn’t shoot the ball well, but I thought we competed at a very high level,” he said. “It’s gonna take a little time as we adjust, figure out where the shots are coming from and what our new identity is gonna look like.”

It certainly won’t look like the team that steamrolled the Suns without a problem in the preseason at full strength.

The difference was told in part by Phoenix’s pair of All-Stars: Devin Booker had 26 points to tie for team lead (DeAndre Ayton also had 26 points), firing a dagger 3-pointer with three minutes to play, while Chris Paul had a team-best 13 assists in a triple-double effort (11 points, 10 rebounds). Paul in particular added defensive menace to his typical role of floor general, adding two steals and block during a key fourth-quarter stretch when the Lakers whittled the lead down to seven points in an admirably scrappy effort.

But the Lakers aren’t looking for moral victories; they’re looking for actual victories. A sloppy shooting night, especially a 5-for-25 mark from 3-point range.

Harrell led the effort with 23 points and 10 rebounds off the bench. Schröder had 22 points, while Horton-Tucker had 17. The Lakers trailed by as much as 18.

Schröder hinted that a winning formula might be found by shifting the pace into high gear.

“I think how we played before with them two on the court, it’s totally opposite now, I think,” he said. “I think we got to move the ball, we got to play with more pace. On the defensive end we got to be more scrappy. And, yeah, I mean everybody who is coming on the floor has got to be confident to knock down the shot or to impact the game on the defensive end.”

It stung a little that Paul, one of James’ close friends in the league, passed the kind of milestone that James has nightly, becoming just the sixth man to record 10,000 assists in NBA history joining John Stockton, Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Mark Jackson and Magic Johnson. He had the game ball tucked beneath his arm during his postgame press conference. Paul’s closest active pursuer is James (9,669), who certainly can’t gain ground in the walking boot he’s wearing for the time being.

Then again the way Paul hit 10,000 stung more than the fact that he did it: He flung a dime to Ayton for a powerful dunk as the Lakers’ defense slumped their shoulders in frustration.

Even though Phoenix coach Monty Williams preached caution beforehand of underestimating the Lakers even without their stars — “L.A.’s still the champs,” he said gamely — the gap between the teams was readily apparent from a 10-2 Suns rally to start. The Lakers never led.

The question became less if the Lakers can measure up to second-place Phoenix without James or Davis (they can’t) and more how far they’ll fall in their shadow in the packed Western Conference standings. They maintained third place even in the loss, but the Clippers are now just a game behind. The San Antonio Spurs, currently in the seventh-place spot for a play-in game, have just two fewer losses (17) than the Lakers.

One of the areas the Lakers were most in need of their missing players was pure size, as they struggled to wrangle in the 7-foot, 250 Ayton as he plowed through the paint. As defenders like Ketavious Caldwell-Pope and Alex Caruso were reduced to simply fouling the former first overall pick — and sometimes that didn’t even work.

But it wasn’t an effort without merit: The Lakers didn’t turn the ball over once in the first quarter and kept a reasonably close pace. Early in the second, it was a tight game at 33-31.

Against the New Orleans Pelicans on Tuesday, they’ll have something to build on, even if it’s a humble place to start.

“It’s going to take a lot,” Harrell said. “It’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. We just lost LeBron last night in a tough back-to-back game, man, so we’re still learning.”

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