The Los Angeles Lakers went into Monday night’s game against the Phoenix Suns winners of seven straight as everything seemed to be coming together for JJ Redick’s team.
This league can humble you real quick though and that’s exactly what happened as the Suns came in and were the more aggressive team, coming away with an easy 125-108 victory to snap the Lakers’ losing streak.
Losses are going to happen, but it’s the way the Lakers lost that was concerning to Redick when he spoke about it after the game.
“Yeah, it’s very simple. [We] talked about it before the game to you guys and the team. If you don’t play hard against that team, you’re gonna get exposed,” Redick said. “So, multiple times in the first half, we have a numbers advantage in transition on the defensive end and guys just run by us. We talked about matching their physicality. [We] didn’t do that to any extent at any point in the game.
“Maybe there is brain fog from three in four nights. I don’t know. I don’t remember ever talking about going under versus lasers and [Collin] Gillespie’s making threes and Royce O’Neale is making threes going up. It’s a weird sort of thing. It really is. It’s like the ‘Monstars’ taking over people that you’ve grown to coach and they’re not doing anything that they normally do. It’s weird.”
It was the second night of a back-to-back so the Lakers may have been playing with tired legs, but that doesn’t account for the mental mistakes that Redick mentioned like silly turnovers and going under on ball screens when the Suns were red-hot from deep.
Those are the type of mistakes that Redick is trying to cut out of the Lakers’ DNA.
“Yeah, the basketball gods reward you and they also punish you,” he said. “So, the moments when we had a chance to be rewarded, we didn’t do what we were supposed to do, and we got punished. And that was throughout the game, not just a singular moment.”
The Lakers are still in a good spot at 15-5 on the season, but after a loss like Monday night’s, Redick knows some changes need to be made.
“You just got to look at everything, everything, rotations, schemes, all that stuff,” Redick concluded.
Things don’t get any easier moving forward as the Lakers head out on a three-game road trip against all teams with winning records, so it makes sense for Redick to address the team’s issues now to avoid them continuing to be a problem moving forward.
Luka Doncic responsible for turnovers in Lakers loss to Suns
Taking care of the ball is important against a team like the Suns that wants to get out and run, but the Lakers were unable to do that as they turned it over 21 times leading to 32 points for Phoenix.
Luka Doncic had nine of those turnovers and despite leading the game in scoring with 38 points, he took accountability for the loss.
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