The Lakers had a lackluster defensive effort against the Mavericks that left JJ Redick more confused than upset or angry.
Ever the team eager to take two steps forward and one step back, the Lakers bungled a great opportunity on Tuesday. Matched up against a Mavs team down both Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving, the Lakers laid an egg and fell in a game that ultimately wasn’t even close.
While there was plenty of blame to go around, the Lakers’ defensive effort was...lackluster at best.
Sloppy closeouts, missed rotations and constant blow-bys all led to the Mavericks shooting 52.3% from the field while connecting on 18 3-pointers. All in all, not great!
Head coach JJ Redick has expressed many emotions in his postgame pressers this season: frustration, exasperation, disappointment. On Tuesday, though, it was a new one.
Confusion.
“Our basic, shell, day one [defense] just wasn’t good,” Redick said. “Low man wasn’t there. If he was there, weakside rotation wasn’t there. We just couldn’t get stops on that.”
“I’m not sure what our rotations were. I’ve never seen us try to execute what we were doing. I haven’t watched the film yet. Just watching it live and talking to the assistants who did watch it on film, we’re not sure what was going on with the shift positioning and the rotations. Never seen it before.”
Breakdowns like the Lakers had defensively are a combination of many things going wrong. In the Lakers’ case, it was even the basic stuff they weren’t doing.
The result was a host of open 3-pointers off drives and kicks. That was never more apparent in the second half than when the Mavs hit four-straight 3-pointers to cap off a huge run that the Lakers never recovered from.
Asked what the team could have done in a situation like that, Redick broke down the different options...and discussed how the Lakers did neither.
“There’s two things that you can do,” Redick said. “One is you stay with your own man…or you can just zone up and you take cutters. We did neither. Again, I’ve never seen that coverage before.”
Ideally, you don’t want your head coach to repeatedly reiterate postgame that he’s never seen his team do something before, particularly when it’s something as catastrophic as what the Lakers did.
If you’re a Lakers fan looking for a glimmer of hope, the Lakers have generally responded well after bad defeats. Unfortunately, it’s also something that they have far too much of a sample size of this season.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.
