It was another rough night to end the Los Angeles Lakers’ road trip as they were blown out by the Memphis Grizzlies 131-114. With no Anthony Davis or Rui Hachimura available, LeBron James did everything he could to help carry the Lakers, but the rest of the team failed to step up as well, much to the dismay of head coach JJ Redick.
James finished with 39 points on 15-of-24 shooting and 6-of-11 from 3-point range to go along with seven rebounds and six assists in the loss. But it wasn’t the counting stats that stood out to Redick, but rather the effort LeBron gave when on the court.
On a night when Redick criticized other Lakers players for their lack of effort, he had nothing but praise for James playing harder than everyone else, despite pushing 40 years old.
“I think LeBron was fantastic tonight,” Redick said after the game. “The biggest thing that stood out, I had no idea he had 39, I’m not looking at the box scores during the game. But he played hard. He’s almost 40 years old and he played the hardest on our team. It says a lot about him.”
At multiple times throughout the contest, LeBron seemed to singlehandedly keep the Lakers within striking distance, but was never able to get them over the hump. Once again the Lakers were outworked and out-hustled in the same way they were against the Pistons and that did not sit well with Redick.
It is on the leaders of the team to set the tone and James did that on this night while Davis has done it any time he has been on the court. LeBron is proving that he can still flip that switch when necessary and turn things up, but it is on the rest of the Lakers to follow suit. Redick will continue to try to get the best out of the rest of the team and put them in ideal situations to thrive, but effort doesn’t require any of that and Redick didn’t see enough out of those not named LeBron James.
JJ Redick feels Lakers lacked attention to detail
As for what really failed the Lakers against the Grizzlies, JJ Redick felt the team lacked an overall attention to detail.
“Didn’t really have good attention to detail. There were segments of the game where I thought we did, we talked about not allowing the ball to come middle. If you do, they run a wheel action, it’s really good offense. Killed us on that. Got corner 3s, got back cuts, allowed the ball to get middle too much. So you’re gonna lose.”
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