Tag Archives: Pummeled

Sports

Lakers vs. Pelicans FInal Score: Lifeless Lakers pummeled by Pelicans

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The Lakers have pretty clearly given up on the season and Sunday was the glaring example of that as the Pelicans raced them off their home court, 123-95.

LeBron James and Russell Westbrook had 14 combined turnovers — seven apiece — in the first three quarters. While James did contribute 32 points, six rebounds and three assists, Russell Westbrook had 15 points and one assist. Carmelo Anthony tried to bring his Staples Melo best, scoring 13 points but it was never enough.

For a team that needed a strong start out of the gate of the All-Star break, the Lakers have done anything but through the first two games with back-to-back losses and now are teetering closer to falling out of the bottom of the play-in game than conceivably making a run to the sixth seed.

Neither team shot out of the gate with much venom. The Lakers struggled with some head-scratching turnovers early on that allowed New Orleans an early 12-9 lead. The turnovers continued throughout the quarter as the Lakers continued to struggle offensively.

Malik Monk tried to provide a spark defensively with a wild sequence akin to that of Ja Morant’s against the Lakers earlier this season.

Tried was the keyword, though, as they only continued turning the ball over offensively as the Pelicans continued building their lead, A 3-pointer by Talen Horton-Tucker offered some life and allowed the Lakers to trail by just four points after one quarter despite shooting 1/7 from the 3-point line and committing nine turnovers.

The Lakers promptly turned the ball over in the second quarter leading directly to a Pelicans 3-pointer, then extended the lead to nine points after a CJ McCollum jumper, forcing a timeout at 31-22 New Orleans. Carmelo Anthony would finally spark something of a run with a 3-pointer and a dunk as part of a 7-1 spurt to cut the lead to 34-31.

That spark was very short-lived as the Pelicans pieced together a 10-0 run late in the quarter to open up a 51-37 lead. James stopped the run with a banked-in 3-pointer but 16 first-half turnovers allowed New Orleans to lead by double digits at halftime.

Things escalated quickly in the second half as the turnovers problems did subside but the lack of good basketball players for the Lakers problem did not. New Orleans built up a 19-point lead after a McCollum 3-pointer. Jonas Valančiūnas pushed the lead to 22 points as the Crypto.com Arena crowd serenaded the Lakers with boos.

The Lakers continued to offer no resistance. DeAndre Jordan’s five-minute cameo did not solve matters as he had a plus-minus of -10 in that span in the third quarter. Brandon Ingram’s driving layup gave them a 30-point lead heading into the fourth quarter.

The fourth quarter happened.

The Lakers host the Mavericks on Tuesday in another nationally televised game on TNT. Tip-off is slated for 7 p.m. PT.

For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast feed on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or Google Podcasts. You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.



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Business

Stocks sink as big banks get pummeled

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The Dow closed 0.6% lower on Friday. The index is off nearly 1% over the past five days and has fallen 1.2% so far this month.

The S&P 500 edged slightly higher and the Nasdaq rose 0.6% — but both indexes still dropped modestly for the week. So far in 2022, the S&P 500 is down 2% while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has slid 5%.
A weak retail sales report for December didn’t help matters on Wall Street. Consumer spending surprisingly fell during that key holiday shopping month, raising concerns that runaway inflation is finally taking a toll on the economy.
But while investors have been shunning big techs like Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Tesla (TSLA) this year, bank stocks were a bright spot for the market — until Friday. Investors were disappointed by JPMorgan Chase’s nearly 15% drop in earnings from the fourth quarter of 2020.
Shares of JPMorgan Chase (JPM) were down 6%. Fellow financials (and Dow components) Goldman Sachs (GS) — which reports earnings next Tuesday — and American Express (AXP) each fell about 3% too.
Citigroup (C) and BlackRock (BLK), which both reported earnings Friday, were also lower. Wells Fargo (WFC) was the bright spot for banks, rallying after posting better-than-expected results.
More big banks, including Bank of America (BAC), Morgan Stanley (MS) and Truist (TFC), will report their results in next week’s holiday-shortened trading session. Earnings are also on tap from consumer products king Procter & Gamble (PG), airlines United (UAL) and American (AAL) and streaming giant Netflix (NFLX).

The stock market is closed Monday in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

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World

British Economy, Post Brexit and Pummeled by Covid, Is Worst in G-7

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The U.K.’s economy shrank more last year than any of the G-7, in what the Bank of England says will be the country’s biggest economic slump in more than 300 years.

What went wrong? Shutdowns caused greater pain for the U.K. than other members of the Group of Seven advanced economies in part because it is especially dependent on consumer spending, which evaporated amid one of Europe’s deadliest Covid-19 outbreaks. The economy was already weak after the four years of negotiations over Britain’s exit from the European Union, during which business investment sagged and households held back on spending.

This is the starting point for Britain’s new relationship with the EU, which began Jan. 1 with a loose free-trade agreement. Earlier this month, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced another nationwide lockdown to fight a new, more-contagious variant of the coronavirus. That puts the U.K. economy on course to shrink again in the first quarter of the year, when businesses must also get to grips with new European trading arrangements.

Growth in the U.K. was already weak going into the pandemic because of feeble business investment, poor productivity and scant growth in incomes. Once the coronavirus set in, the British economy shrank by more than its peers in the G-7 in the first nine months of the year. Figures for the final quarter, due Feb. 12, are expected to show the economy contracted again.

The U.K. took a bigger hit because around 13% of its annual gross domestic product comes from spending on recreation and culture and in restaurants and hotels, a higher share than any other G-7 country. Businesses that depend on direct contact with consumers—bars and restaurants, sports events, hotels and theaters, cinemas and museums—were hobbled when social distancing became the norm and when the spread of the virus forced them to close. The current lockdown, in place through mid-February, closes schools and nonessential shops, and people have been told to leave home only if necessary.

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