The Los Angeles Lakers have now lost back-to-back games in crunch time, something that was once the backbone of their team. They lost by one to the Orlando Magic on Tuesday, then by three to the Phoenix Suns on Thursday. In both losses, late-game execution was the talking point. On Thursday, it was spearheaded by Marcus Smart.
Smart, the former Defensive Player of the Year winner, has been an essential part of the Lakers’ success this season. The offseason free agent signing has been arguably the team’s best defensive player, and has definitely been a vocal leader on and off the floor.
He gave his stance on what went wrong for the Lakers against the Suns and what needs to change moving forward to ensure losses like Thursday’s don’t happen again, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Our miscommunication. They do a good job of playing with pace, and we just didn’t communicate. A lot of their shots — I think like eight of them — were just that we didn’t talk, we didn’t switch when we were supposed to, and they got to set their feet and have all day and knock it down. That’s on us. But you gotta give those guys credit, they ran their plays with execution to get those shots. And we just gotta be better.”
He continued on with a common platitude about the game of basketball, and how it’s on the players — not the coaches or anyone else — to avoid falling on the wrong end of late-game runs:
“This game is a game of runs, we all know that. We went on a run, they came back and went on a run, we went on another run and put ourselves in a spot to send it into overtime. That’s part of it. We just gotta do a better job of closing it out. We can’t have a 6-0 run like that, especially turning it over after they hit a three. Get a steal and hit another three, we can’t have that. That’s on us. It’s nothing the coaches can do, the game plan, they had a great game plan for us. We just gotta go out and execute it.”
One thing that has been consistent about the Lakers under head coach JJ Redick is that, when they lose games like this, the players are quick to take accountability rather than blaming the game plan or anything else. That was not true of previous Lakers coaching regimes.
But at a certain point, like Smart says, the Lakers have to be able to execute. And despite a 34-24 record, it’s fairly clear they haven’t been executing when the moment is big enough.
JJ Redick believes Lakers losses are louder
Redick applauded his team for the way they respond to losses, but also stated that they are at a disadvantage. He believes L.A.’s losses are louder than other teams simply by virtue of them being the Lakers. Still, he thinks his team does a good job rolling with that despite the reality.
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