The Los Angeles Lakers have garnered a bit of a reputation as a team that constantly complains to the officials, sometimes to a fault as it can prevent them from getting back on defense and giving up easy buckets. Luka Doncic has long been known as someone always barking at officials, but the Lakers’ other two stars in Austin Reaves and LeBron James have had plenty of moments themselves as well.
That frustration boiled over in the second quarter of the Lakers’ loss to the Boston Celtics on Sunday as Reaves picked up a technical after a foul was called on Marcus Smart. Afterwards, Reaves broke down what led to the technical, feeling it wasn’t warranted and that far more worse things are said to officials without a tech being issued.
“I mean, I thought JB (Jaylen Brown) elbowed Marcus [Smart] in the face. I didn’t say anything disrespectful,” Reaves said. “He told me I got a tech because I clapped my hands. I just said, ‘Offense foul.’ Or offensive, I think I said [it] over and over again. I kind of walked by him, didn’t turn around and say anything else, but he told me that it’s an automatic tech when you clap, I guess towards a ref.
“There’s, yeah, I don’t know. I’ve heard way more disrespectful things said to officials and, and nothing, no tech or anything. But yeah, I mean, there’s a level of frustration. You want to stand up for your teammates. But also, just you know, I know you elbowed him in the face and he might have fouled him before. But yeah, I didn’t think that it warranted a tech, but it’s not for me to say.”
If that is all that Reaves said, he certainly has a point in that there are far worse things being said to officials. But the league has made it more of a focus in recent years about different acts towards the refs also being unacceptable.
The more important point for Reaves and the Lakers as a whole is whether they let that frustration towards officials affect them too much. And Reaves admitted that the team and himself specifically need to be better about that.
“Yeah. I think we can get that way sometimes,” Reaves added. “We play down hill and we do shoot a lot of free throws, but I think that’s kind of a play style thing. We don’t get up a lot of 3s, we attack down hill and see contact and I think that’s the reason we do shoot a lot of free throws. But when you don’t get those calls, you can’t stay frustrated. You gotta move on to the next play. I’m a culprit of that. I gotta do better in those situations and our whole team does as well.”
Like Reaves said, the Lakers are a team that plays downhill and attacks the rim constantly between himself, Doncic and James, and that is why they are able to get those calls and live at the free throw line. But when things don’t go their way, the Lakers can’t let that anger boil over as the game quickly gets out of hand and they give themselves no chance of climbing back.
JJ Redick: Lakers offense was awful vs. Celtics
Normally when the Lakers suffer a bad loss it is their defense that came up short, but against the Celtics head coach JJ Redick felt the offense was far below their normal standard.
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