The Los Angeles Lakers kept it close the entire way through, but ultimately suffered their third straight loss on Friday night against the Atlanta Hawks and are now 2-7 in their last nine contests. After imploring his team to take accountability with two embarrassing losses, head coach JJ Redick saw a different and more competitive team.
However, the red-hot Hawks were simply too much for the Lakers down the stretch, beating them with late-game execution to grab the win in overtime, their sixth victory in a row. LeBron James and Anthony Davis were both phenomenal in the loss, but it wasn’t enough to overcome Trae Young and the Hawks’ clutch shot-making.
RWhen asked about comparisons between this game and an earlier loss to the Orlando Magic, Redick spoke about the issues that are plaguing the Lakers in close games late, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Different type of scenario than the Orlando game but certainly frustrated with the late-game execution. The turnover, Bron makes a great play to get the block, but it wasn’t exactly the right sort of angles and screening that we’ve done many times at practice in one of our end game, get the ball in plays. I think the concern when you run that is when AD comes back towards halfcourt, that’s not what you want ideally because then he’s sort of in a trapable spot versus catching it in the middle of the floor. And then they did a good job just in pursuit of the basketball on the jump ball. Then I don’t know if it was the communication or whatnot, but we messed up the ‘Red’ with Trae Young and left him open.”
The Lakers head coach also took issue with the way the Lakers guarded Young, who finished with 31 points and 20 assists, even if on inefficient shooting numbers:
“Yeah, just felt like, we played it back and forth, do we want to play coverage or do we want to be in switching, but I think [Trae] was 9-for-25, so I think the thought process was to stay out of coverage and out of drop where he’s just throwing the ball all over the place and getting 18 assists. That’s not the right option, and he still gets 20 (assists). So didn’t do a great job of our ‘Reds’ in general. When we did it, we were solid and we kept people in front of us. We say it all the time too, all season we’ve had switching groups and you still need a low man. I don’t think we were great with our low mans tonight. Had a couple of good low mans but didn’t have good low mans.”
It is definitely a step up for the Lakers that they can talk about specific adjustment and execution issues in late-game situations, as opposed to simply not showing up at all. After two horrible losses, seeing the Lakers in a close game at all was refreshing.
But they didn’t have the late-game execution to close things out and steal what would have been a massive victory. It ends a frustrating a difficult 1-3 road trip for L.A.
LeBron James discusses Lakers’ loss to Hawks
Lakers LeBron James star was very succinct in his summation of the Lakers’ loss to the Hawks, saying that it came down to Atlanta making a couple more right plays than they did. And while a loss is still a loss, it is certainly an improvement from where the Lakers were after their last two games.
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