Paul Millsap on Lakers' loss: 'They did it to themselves'

Paul Millsap led the Utah Jazz with 24 points in the team's 117-110 win over the L.A. Lakers on Sunday, giving the Salt Lake squad its third straight win and dropping Showtime to 9-12. How did it happen? Most would argue L.A. was simply unable to slow down the Jazz defense. Millsap had another point of view. From NBA.com's recap:

"They did it to themselves," Millsap said of the 9-12 Lakers. "Our defense was pretty good, but they had no ball movement and that made it easier on us just to try to load up, keep them out of the paint and let them fire up some 3s."

L.A. hit 15-28 on three-pointers; almost a third of the Lakers' shots were threes. And they actually seemed to move the ball well: they had assists on 29 of 40 field goals (73 percent). But the Lakers did do it to themselves by allowing Utah to score at will: the Jazz scored a ridiculous 1.33 points per possession. That's just off the charts.

Steve Nash should be back soon, but that's certainly not going to help the defense. We'll see if Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant and Mike D'Antoni can pull it together over the next few months.