After a week off, the Los Angeles Lakers returned to action against a struggling Charlotte Hornets team.
It was the first game back from the All-Star break, so some rust was to be expected. But not many people would have predicted the Lakers to look as bad as they did through the first half of the game. Los Angeles’ offense was stuck in the mud due to turnovers and missed shots, though they managed to hold the lead against a Charlotte team going nowhere.
Unfortunately, the Lakers’ offensive woes continued in the second half and they were enough to cost them a win against the lowly Hornets.
Head coach JJ Redick didn’t necessarily give the team a pass, but laid out why he thought the offense looked so rough.
“Overall, I think we played 39 to 44 minutes of pretty poor offense,” Redick said. “Some of that’s to be expected. Some of it was sloppiness, some of it was poor spacing and some of it was poor execution. The reason I’m not going to read too much into that is because I think our guys competed tonight and they played extremely hard. I also think Charlotte played very sloppy [and] that’s not to make an excuse. That’s just the reality of just having six days off as a group and trying to integrate new pieces. That happens sometimes.
“I’ve been a part of those first games after All-Star break when they are humming, and I’ve been a part of them when they’ve been sloppy like they were tonight. I thought our effort and competitive spirit was good enough to win, just we were really poor offensively for 90 percent of the game.”
However, Redick added that he’s excited about having to find a way to integrate Luka Doncic and the other new additions into and formulate a new offense that is more 3-point centric.
“I think sometimes, when the group is trying to get acclimated with each other, you can try to play the right way too much and turn down shots, and then you can try to get yourself in a rhythm and not make the extra pass. I think the flow of everything is going to happen. I’m excited because this is a new problem to solve. Great. We’ll work our butts off to try to solve the problem,” Redick said.
“But I’m excited about us being able to generate that stuff, getting two on the ball. We’ll just continue to re-emphasize the type of shots we want. And I felt from the Detroit game on, on December 23, I’ve really liked the threes we’ve generated.”
Redick has been good so far in getting his team to respond to losses, so it’ll be interesting to see how they fare on the second night of a back-to-back against the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday.
Hornet’s Mark Williams doesn’t understand how he failed Lakers’ physical
Heading into the matchup, things must have felt awkward for Mark Williams, who was traded to the Lakers but then sent back to the Hornets due to a failed physical. Williams admitted that he wasn’t sure why he failed the physical, though that’s information privy to the Lakers.
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