Column: The Lakers are struggling. Can JJ Redick help them find their footing?
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Deflating. Frustrating. Embarrassing.
What other words can be used to describe the Lakers’ 100-97 defeat to the Charlotte Hornets at Crypto.com Arena on Wednesday night?
So what if Luka Doncic was playing for only the third time since Christmas? So what if Austin Reaves was ejected in the third quarter? So what if the Lakers’ two best defensive players are now Dallas Mavericks? So what if the Lakers were coming back from the All-Star break?
They lost to the stinkin’ Hornets, and that was with LeBron James scoring 16 of his team-high 26 points in the fourth quarter.
The Lakers have to do something, and they know it, coach JJ Redick calling his team “a little bit of a work in progress.”
Luka Doncic made just five of 18 shots as the Lakers fell to the Hornets, who are one of the league’s worst teams.
Are they ever.
They have James and Doncic but no center, the team relying on the likes of Jaxson Hayes and Alex Len to provide an inside presence after their trade with the Hornets for Mark Williams was rescinded.
Coaching can make up for shortcomings in personnel, and that places a considerable burden on Redick, whose job description was suddenly and radically changed with about 30 games remaining in his rookie season.
“Just trying to figure out what this new group is,” Redick said.
Whether Redick can do that will determine how this season unfolds.
Whether Redick can devise a practically center-less system will dictate whether the Lakers salvage this season or once again take a wait-until-next-year approach.
The stakes are high. Every year counts, especially with James already 40 years old and Doncic eligible to opt out of his contract after next season.
“I’m excited because this is a new problem to solve,” Redick said. “Great. We’ll work our butts off to solve the problem.”
He better. Or else.
The Lakers are well practiced in the art of throwing coaches under the proverbial bus, and Redick would be naive to think they won’t do to him what they did to Darvin Ham or Frank Vogel if he can’t transform the team into a legitimate contender sooner rather than later.
As most coaches in a similar position would do, Redick pleaded for patience.
“I think we played, I don’t even know, 39 to 44 minutes of pretty poor offense,” he said. “Some of that’s to be expected. Some of it was sloppiness, some of it was poor spacing, some it was poor execution. The reason I’m not going to read too much into it is because I think our guys competed tonight and they played extremely hard. I also think Charlotte played very sloppy. That’s not to make an excuse. That’s just the reality of just having six days off as a group and integrating new pieces.”
Doncic scored just 14 points on 5-of-18 shooting, but that shouldn’t ring any alarm bells. He will presumably regain strength in his legs and resume scoring at some point.
More troubling was the team’s offensive approach. Redick sounded as if he was doubling down on his analytics-driven philosophy of calling for more three-point attempts, even if the Lakers might not have the necessary players to execute such a strategy.
“I felt from the Detroit game on Dec. 23, I’ve really liked the threes we’ve generated,” Redick said.
Against the Hornets, the Lakers attempted a season-high 51 threes. In their previous game, a 131-119 loss to the equally-awful Utah Jazz, they shot 50.
Arutyun Gozukuchikyan’s new mural of Kobe Bryant and Luka Doncic captures them embracing each other at a Lakers game in December 2019, a month before Bryant died in a helicopter crash.
In a third quarter against the Hornets in which they were outscored 32-18, the Lakers made only two of 12 threes. Their reluctance to attack the basket resulted in just 12 free-throw attempts over the entire game.
“I think we had some good opportunities to make shots but we didn’t make any shots, especially me,” said Doncic, who was 1 of 9 from behind the arc.
James was critical earlier in the season of the number of threes that were being attempted around the league. Asked on Wednesday night about the Lakers’ increase in three-point attempts, he replied with a chuckle, “Don’t ask me a three-point question, please.”
The clock is ticking for Redick. The Lakers are to play another bottom dweller in the Portland Trail Blazers on Thursday night, but their schedule becomes tougher after that, starting with a Saturday showdown in Denver against the Nuggets.
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