The Los Angeles Lakers rolled into Monday night riding a seven-game winning streak, looking every bit like a team finding its rhythm under JJ Redick.
Then the Phoenix Suns walked into Crypto.com Arena and delivered a reality check.
Phoenix dominated from start to finish in a 125-108 win, snapping the Lakers’ streak and exposing issues Redick didn’t hesitate to call out.
“Yeah, it’s very simple,” Redick said. [We] talked about it before the game to you guys and the team. If you don’t play hard against that team, you’re gonna get exposed. So, multiple times in the first half, we have a numbers advantage in transition on the defensive end and guys just run by us. We talked about matching their physicality. [We] didn’t do that to any extent at any point in the game.
“Maybe there is brain fog from three in four nights. I don’t know. I don’t remember ever talking about going under versus lasers and [Collin] Gillespie’s making threes and Royce O’Neale is making threes going up. It’s a weird sort of thing. It really is. It’s like the ‘Monstars’ taking over people that you’ve grown to coach and they’re not doing anything that they normally do. It’s weird.”
Fatigue might have played a part, given it was the second night of a back-to-back, but Redick made clear that tired legs don’t explain the mental breakdowns, turnovers, slow rotations, and repeatedly going under screens while Phoenix buried threes.
“Yeah, the basketball gods reward you and they also punish you,” Redick continued. “So, the moments when we had a chance to be rewarded, we didn’t do what we were supposed to do, and we got punished. And that was throughout the game, not just a singular moment.”
The Lakers committed 21 turnovers, leading directly to 32 Phoenix points.
Luka Doncic was responsible for nine of those, and despite dropping 38 points, he owned the mistakes and accepted the blame for the loss.
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