SALT LAKE CITY _ On a group text thread between Los Angeles Lakers players earlier this week, someone made reference to a social media slogan Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson has adopted.
"Nobody cares, work harder."
It resonated with the Lakers.
"That's kind of the motto we talked about after our loss," Alex Caruso said. "Nobody cares if we lose. If we lose, people get excited, people get up for that. We've gotten to that point after such a good start. For us it's not worrying about that. We gotta go out there and do our job regardless. Sick, not sick. It's going to be harder on certain nights. Obviously, first night of a back-to-back tough road trip, but that's just kind of the character that we have as a team."
On Wednesday night, the Lakers (19-3) ensured they would come out of their latest road trip with a winning record. They beat the Utah Jazz, 121-96, a night after beating the Denver Nuggets. The Lakers' trip will finish in Portland on Friday.
Frank Vogel cautioned before the game that Utah wasn't what its record suggested. The Jazz had just come off a road trip in which they lost four out of the five games, but entered Wednesday 8-1 at home.
The Lakers took them seriously enough to blow them out.
Anthony Davis scored 26 points, on 9-of-11 shooting, and blocked three shots. He rested for most of the fourth quarter, with the game well in hand. LeBron James also exited early, having scored 20 points with 12 assists.
Kyle Kuzma, one of the two players most affected by a cold bug permeating the locker room, hit three-pointers in the final seconds of both the first and second quarters. He finished with 13 points and a team-high four steals.
The game closed with one familiar sight for the Lakers _ the home fans leaving while interloping Laker fans chanted for them.
And one less familiar sight: LeBron James standing near the Lakers bench, shoeless, cheering for his teammates while sometimes wandering onto the court.
