Over a quarter of the way through the 2024-25 season, and teams are starting to get a sense of their true identity. For the Los Angeles Lakers, that means a harsh realization about their defense. And that has everyone — from head coach JJ Redick to superstar Anthony Davis to role players like Max Christie — searching for answers.
Prior to games on Friday, the Lakers have the 26th-ranked defense in the NBA. That puts them at fifth-worst with only the Chicago Bulls, New Orleans Pelicans, Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards beneath them. The Lakers are the only team in the bottom 10 with an above .500 record, suggesting that their record could be a bit inflated.
Everyone on the Lakers has tried to tackle this issues. Some theories have boiled it down to a pure lack of effort on that end, while some have said it’s due to the Lakers missing some of their key defensive contributors. Christie’s theory, though, dives into the personalities that the Lakers have and how it may lend itself to issues with communication on defense.
“It’s watching film first, as a team, and two, kind of we just gotta talk more,” Christie said. “I know we were talking about this as a team, a lot of the guys on our team, just kind of like their personalities, we’re not very big talkers. We’re not very outgoing, we’re not extraverts. So that’s a challenge for us that we’ve accepted and we’re gonna work on.
“We worked on it a lot today in practice. Certain guys weren’t talking as much and we were getting on them much more with coverages and pick-and-roll and just talking in general when we’re on the defensive end or offensive end. So for us, it’s kind of just a little bit of a challenge that we gotta go through, but it’s not anything that we can do physically. It’s kind of just a choice for us to start talking more and collaborate together as a team.”
Communication has been a consistent topic of conversation for the Lakers this season. But this is the first time that it seems the Lakers have actually tried to break down why. And while personality types are a hard thing to overcome, it appears L.A. is working to curb these issues.
JJ Redick stresses importance of Lakers communicating
The Lakers have been in a very rough stretch over the past couple of weeks. The team has lost seven of their last 10 games and been blown out in many of those while often looking disengaged and lethargic, much to the dismay of head coach JJ Redick.
Redick and the Lakers coaching staff have been working hard to fix the issues plaguing this team on the court, but it has not come to fruition just yet. Similar to Max Christie, Redick believes a lot of the Lakers’ defensive struggles come down to the need to communicate better.
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