The Los Angeles Lakers got off on the wrong foot to start their road trip, losing to the Boston Celtics in primetime.
However, things went from bad to worse for the Lakers as they followed up the loss to the Celtics with one to a struggling Brooklyn Nets team. Los Angeles lost 111-108, a disappointing defeat that could come back to haunt them.
The Lakers were incredibly shorthanded as they were missing LeBron James, Rui Hachimura, Dorian Finney-Smith and Jaxson Hayes, but they still had enough talent left to pull of a victory. Instead, it was a game they lost due to their own errors and head coach JJ Redick must find a way to turn things around.
Following the loss, Redick emphasized how poorly the team communicated as a whole, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Just throw the ball to the guy. And then you play four-on-three. I think it was a very low-level communication game for our team.”
Redick also didn’t give his team a pass for being shorthanded, instead emphasizing the players’ needs to gamble and take shortcuts:
“I don’t think being shorthanded is an excuse for how we played basketball tonight… I think it was just an overall mentality to take shortcuts tonight, we just wanted to take shortcuts. They scored 20 points on us gambling. They had 16 offensive rebounds and we ball-watched all night. We said no dare shots, I don’t even wanna go through it, they probably made six or seven uncontested 3s. Just shortcuts. If you wanna be a good team and win in the NBA, you gotta do the hard stuff. We couldn’t even pass to each other. We couldn’t enter our offense running ball screens at literally halfcourt. Yeah, that’s gonna end up in a turnover. I don’t know what we’re doing… We just gotta be better, and we’ll use practice to clean things up and make sure everybody’s one of the same page.”
Redick doesn’t normally mince words after losses, and this time he sounded particularly irritated with how the game unfolded. Unfortunately for him and his staff, things don’t get any easier as they have a back-to-back set against the Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets on Thursday and Friday, respectively. As Redick mentioned though, they will get in a much-needed practice beforehand.
LeBron James says Lakers can compete with anyone, but not at Celtics level yet
Without LeBron James, the Lakers looked sloppy on both ends of the floor. When healthy, the Lakers can beat anybody and while James is confident in his team he also acknowledged they’re not at the Boston Celtics’ level yet.
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