The Los Angeles Lakers were unable to pick up a win in their regular season opener, falling to the Golden State Warriors 119-109 despite an outstanding individual performance from Luka Doncic, And unfortunately for JJ Redick’s squad, a familiar issue popped up as the Lakers came out of halftime slow and were never able to recover.
The Lakers were outscored 19-4 to start the second half, falling behind by as many as 17 points in the contest. This has been an issue for multiple years now and Redick feels the Lakers must figure out how to come out of halftime better.
“The trend I see is that we continue to be a terrible third-quarter team to start,” Redick said after the game. “That was last year, that was the preseason. Gotta rethink some things, and it’s a two-way thing with the guys. What do they need at halftime to make sure they’re ready to play? They’re not ready to play to start the third quarter.”
But despite that, Redick still saw some positives from the Lakers. Particularly when it came to the team’s discipline defensively against certain Warriors sets. “Pretty good, actually, outside of a few buckets there in the third quarter,” Redick noted. “Pretty good.”
In the end, however, Redick felt the Lakers came up short mostly due to self-inflicted wounds.
“It’s like the times … you make your own thing up,” Redick added. “Steph Curry gets a back cut for a layup. Gary Payton [II] slips and gets a dunk. We don’t [switch] a small-small pick-and-roll, and Jimmy [Butler] turns the corner, they get a layup… It’s mostly self-inflicted.
“If you look at this game, like a microcosm of this game was we did enough good things to put ourselves in a position to win for most of the game. And when we didn’t do those things, they were self-inflicted. That’s not being organized in early offense. That’s having the wrong guy bring it up. It’s not anything Golden State did to us.”
The Lakers’ 19 turnovers led to 24 Warriors points and that is something this team will have to clean up. But the thing with self-inflicted wounds is that they are fixable and Redick and this coaching staff will work with these players on getting these things together so the Lakers can be a real competitor this season.
Lakers’ Luka Doncic says groin injury is ‘probably nothing’
If there was one major concern for the Lakers it was the fact that superstar Luka Doncic was seen limping late in the contest with what looks to be a groin issue. But Doncic brushed it off after the game.
“It’s probably nothing,” Luka said. “Just felt it a little bit because my hip went the opposite way. Felt it a little bit, but it’s probably nothing.”
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