The Los Angeles Lakers have been wildly inconsistent the past few weeks, stumbling through the end of the 2025 calendar year before seemingly picking back up to begin 2026.
However, the Lakers’ early success to begin the new year may have been fool’s gold as they’ve gone back to struggling in the same areas that have plagued them all season. Los Angeles put up an impressive performance against the Atlanta Hawks despite being on the second night of a back-to-back, so they were set up well to continue that positive momentum against the Charlotte Hornets.
Charlotte is in the midst of a rebuild and is enduring its share of growing pains with its young core, so the Lakers were in the driver’s seat when they hosted them. However, it was the Lakers that found themselves on the wrong side of the scoreboard as they lost 135-117 in a largely listless effort.
When discussing what went wrong defensively, head coach JJ Redick said Charlotte got the team’s attention but shot incredibly well from the field.
“I saw the same thing everybody else saw. They made some ridiculous shots,” Redick said. “You’re gonna have certain breakdowns in your defense and that third quarter, that could have been really deflating for our team and it wasn’t. We kept fighting and played some really good basketball. I think in general, with our team, it’s against certain teams that have dynamic drivers, which the Hornets, they have some really good drivers and they haven a ton of shooting. We can be a little bit cautious guarding the ball and if we do get beat off the dribble, then we’re in rotation. I thought our low-man was awful all night and so we’re scared of the drive.
“And then, we’re just too far off from the body. There was some of that tonight and that’s a good offensive team. They had 150 against Utah and blew out OKC at [Oklahoma City]. I think everybody, our coaching staff and the guys in the locker room, we all knew that. They got our full respect and attention pregame and [I] thought we fought. Just another team that has a hot shooting night.”
The Lakers have made it a habit of playing down to their competition, but that didn’t seem to be the issue against Charlotte as they looked like they treated the game with a sense of urgency. However, the wheels fell off in the second quarter where they went on extended offensive drought that allowed the Hornets to take the lead and never look back.
Redick has been better about keeping the offense organized this season, but he and the coaching staff have had no answers for how to fix the defensive end. Los Angeles can score in bunches, but being unable to get stops has been their downfall more often than not.
The Lakers desperately need to shake things up either schematically or via the trade market because the current group looks anything but a title contender.
JJ Redick admits Lakers’ poor 3-point shooting has become theme
The loss to the Hornets particularly stings because the Lakers had a decent night shooting the ball from outside, knocking down 14 of their 38 attempts. Redick believes poor 3-point shooting has become a theme, so hopefully this performance breathes some optimism that they can still improve.
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