After the Los Angeles Lakers‘ 131-114 loss against the Memphis Grizzlies on Wednesday, coach JJ Redick called out his team for its transition defense, defensive rebounding and effort in general. The Grizzlies took advantage when the Lakers jogged back on defense, and Memphis rebounded almost 40% of its misses. Redick also told reporters that, despite the fact that Los Angeles had “talked about not allowing the ball to come middle,” the Grizzlies “killed us on that.”
Redick praised LeBron James, who scored 39 points on 15-for-24 shooting: “He’s almost 40 years old and played the hardest on our team.” When asked if he was satisfied with the rest of the team’s effort, though, he said, “None of us are.” D’Angelo Russell played only 22 minutes, and Redick told reporters that he didn’t put Russell back in after the midway point of the third quarter because of his “level of compete” and “attention to detail.”
These are “some of the things we have talked with him about for a couple weeks,” Redick said. “And at times, he’s been really good with that stuff, and other times it’s just reverting back to certain habits. It wasn’t like a punishment; it just felt like, for us to have a chance to win this game, that was the route we wanted to take. Gabe [Vincent] in the first half, defensively, was fantastic, and I just wanted to see what that looked like.”
Late in the first quarter, Russell allowed Scotty Pippen Jr. to walk into a wide-open 3 after a make. In the second quarter, the Lakers again failed to get matched up after a made basket, and Russell’s man, Jaylen Wells, knocked down an open 3 in the corner.
Through eight games, Los Angeles is 4-4, but it has allowed 118.8 points per 100 possessions, the third-worst mark in the league. It has allowed 21.3 fast break points per 100 possessions, which ranks dead last. When it comes to transition defense, their numbers on Cleaning The Glass are horrifying — they are not only allowing opponents to run at a high frequency, they are surrendering by far the most transition points of any team in the league this season — or any other season in the database, which goes back to 2003-04.
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The Lakers began the season by beating the Minnesota Timberwolves, Phoenix Suns and Sacramento Kings at home. The loss in Memphis concluded a five-game road trip in which they went 1-4, including a 24-point loss in Cleveland and a 12-point loss in Detroit. Anthony Davis missed the Grizzlies game but was available for all the others. While the strong start may have been misleading, Los Angeles’ transition defense probably shouldn’t be the worst ever.
“You have a choice every night for how you play, and it has nothing to do with making shots,” Redick said. “There’s gotta be a group of people — seven, eight guys — that make that choice, and we’re a really good basketball team. If we have a handful, if we have two or three, we’re not going to be a good basketball team that night. So that’s just the reality. I mean, that’s my biggest takeaway [from the road trip], to be honest.”
Making shots, however, does remain an issue. James made 6 of his 11 3-point attempts in Memphis, but the rest of the team shot a combined 9 for 37. Only two teams have attempted 3s less frequently this season, per Cleaning The Glass, and the Lakers rank 25th in both catch-and-shoot 3-point percentage and wide-open 3-point percentage, per nba.com. As they return home to face the Philadelphia 76ers on Friday and Toronto Raptors on Sunday, they have a variety of problems to solve.
