JJ Redick and the Los Angeles Lakers were left searching for answers after a six-point halftime lead over the Denver Nuggets turned into a blowout loss in a matter of minutes.
The Lakers have now lost 13 of their last 14 games to the Nuggets. While Redick wasn’t here for another of the previous ones, he emphatically stated after the loss that he didn’t feel their previous lack of success against Denver had an impact of this game and the rough third quarter, in particular.
After getting a chance to watch the film, Redick feels his players were just not giving enough effort during that run, which he doesn’t expect to become a regular occurrence.
“We just stopped playing… We can all be better,” Redick said after practice on Monday. “The organization has to be there and really there’s only so much [the coaches] can do. We can try to joystick it as much as possible but like I can joystick it as much as I want but if you’re not competing and not playing and not participating in the game, there’s not a whole lot I can do. And that’s an aberration to me. We’ve been punched in the mouth so much in games, we’ve been down and came back, we’ve started slow, we’ve started strong. We’ve had adversity in nearly every game. To me, that stretch of the third quarter was an aberration.
“That’s not who we are and I reiterated that to the team this morning, we showed them who we are on tape. It’s not like a thing that weighed on me much yesterday, it was more about how do we focus on today and this week. It’s a big week for us. Not that we’re overlooking it and not holding people accountable, but it’s an aberration to me. That’s not who we are.”
While Redick may be right, lack of energy in third quarters has seemingly been a theme for the Lakers for years now, in addition to their overall struggles against Denver.
There isn’t much time to dwell on it as the Lakers need to turn to the page with more difficult games coming up on the schedule. Not having energy against an opponent like the Nuggets is concerning though given their history, so hopefully Redick was able to nip it in the bud during their film session to avoid it becoming a theme for this team.
JJ Redick: Lakers need to address weaknesses defensively
A lot of the struggles for the Lakers this season have come on the defensive end of the floor, which JJ Redick said he and his staff need to address sooner rather than later.
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