Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Lakers Suffer Brutal Loss to Hornets, 100-97. Reaves Ejected, Luka Struggles

Episode Date: February 20, 2025

Fans might have been willing to forgive last week's loss to Utah heading into the All-Star break, with all the upheaval around the trade deadline, including the arrival of Luka Dončić and the non-arrival of Mark Williams. Bad games happen, even if they shouldn't. But losing Wednesday at home against Charlotte? That one is gonna annoy people. Final score, 100-97. There was plenty not to like. Austin Reaves, already having a rough game to that point, lost his cool after a non-call late in the third and quickly picked up a pair of T's. Luka, while playing more minutes (33) and piling up rebounds (11) and assists (eight), also turned the ball over six times and was 5-18 from the floor. The Lakers turned the ball over 18 times. they took 51 3's as a team, and only made 15. 41 percent from the floor, overall. Only 12 FTAs, on their home floor. This was ugly. It also exposed some of the things that are going to be a challenge going forward for the Lakers while they figure out the Luka/LeBron combination, and even potentially after things get smoother in that regard. The Lakers have struggled against zones all year, and Wednesday was no different. But particularly after Reaves was tossed, the inability of the Lakers to get into the paint off the dribble was pretty stark. Before, they always had Davis as a presence to get the ball inside. Now, they have to find other ways to push the ball towards the basket. And then for long stretches, it felt like Luka and LeBron were wearing the same uniform, but not necessarily playing in the same game. Over time, the Lakers are going to have to find ways to get the two of them more active together from possession to possession. Yes, ther will always bee some "your turn, my turn" going on, and that's not necessarily bad, even. But it can't be all of what's happening, either. And, no question, center is a problem. Jaxson Hayes was fine on Wednesday. Alex Len was... fine-ish. But LA just isn't going to be in a position to make that position a plus. So it's a matter of minimizing the downside and capitalizing on the good matchups. Logic said this would always be a process. The hope was the Lakers could work through it while winning games, especially against bad teams. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and with another challenging game tonight in Portland, the Lakers are going to need to turn things around over time against better competition. That's just a function of the schedule and the reality of making such a massive in-season trade. But there's still plenty of reason to believe that better games are ahead. HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky SEGMENT 1: The Lakers lose to Charlotte, 100-97.SEGMENT 2: A bad night for Reaves, a struggle for Luka. SEGMENT 3: Wednesday showed where some of the team's issues are. Your favorite podcast now has a newsletter! In One-stop for ultimate team and league coverage delivered right to your in box. Sign up for free now, at lockedondaily.com.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Turbo TaxReady for stress-free taxes and the most money back, guaranteed? Head over to TurboTax.com today and get matched with your Expert. Only available with TurboTax Live Full Service. 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Hey, everyone, welcome to Locked-on Lakers for Thursday. Brian Kiminetsky, Andy Keminetsky, Austin Reeves is ejected. Luca Donchich struggles with turnovers and the Lakers lose at home to Charlotte. An ugly, ugly night at L. That's next. You are Locked-on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked-on podcast network, your team every day.

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They come out of the break, Andy, and lose again, this time to Charlotte, one of the worst teams in the NBA. and certainly one of the worst road teams in the NBA, 100 to 97 is the final score. Austin Reeves gets ejected to LeBron James, three-point attempts to tie the game in the final possession. Both come up short. Do you want to let everybody know that today's episode is brought to you by Fanduel.

Right now, new Fandual customers can get $150 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. So very much in this game, Andy, to dislike. I don't want to say I gave him a pass for Wednesday, but I didn't freak out about it last week. This one was very annoying and very bad. I'm not going to freak out over this. It's not freaking out, but still very annoying.

It was, to me, it wasn't even so much annoying, although I wouldn't blame anybody for framing it that way, as it was just very weird. It was a very weird game. very disjointed, very out of sync. One of the things I know I want to talk about over the course of the show is it felt like LeBron and Luca even acknowledging they have been teammates for three total games and have barely spent any time with Luca healthy at all.

But it felt like they might as well have been playing two separate games because they were involved so little together in terms of synergy. I would agree. But things really fell off the rail. They fell really off the rails for the Lakers late in the third quarter, coinciding pretty directly with Austin Rees' objection, which we'll get into. But even in the first quarter that the Lakers finished up 2821, they turned the ball over nine times in that first quarter. Five of them belonged to Luca. and looking back on it, those empty possessions really mattered because had the Lakers scored

on just like a third of them, they get enough points to win this game. So it all ends up coming back to bite the Lakers in the ass one way or the other. Yeah, and I look at this as a, you know, they gave up 20 points off turnover. So which given how often they turn the ball over isn't a terrible thing. figure. But again, to your point, Andy, if you either just don't turn the ball over in those situations to give up the points, or, you know, how about this? Score. You're in a different situation. Lakers only got to the line 12 times. They, Rui Hachamura missed two critical free throws down the stretch. This was a game. You can point to the, if it was 63 points the Lakers gave

up in the second half, whatever. This was a game the Lakers lost on offense. And it's like, I mean, to me, 100% a game that you, I don't care how many second half points you give up. In the NBA, in 2025, when the other team scores 100 points, you should win. And like, that's just like you, you should win when you hold the other team to, uh, a hundred points. And you look at the, the Lakers and what they did offensively, and the numbers are just hideous. They shot 41% overall, 29% from three on 51 attempts. I mentioned the 12

free throws, those two numbers, by the way, are directly related to each other. Too many threes, not enough activity going towards the basket, too many turnovers. and this is the result. I mean, this was a terrible offensive game. As JJ Reddick said afterwards, they played, I think he estimated 39 to 44 minutes of really bad offense. I mean, to reframe what you were saying about how in 2025, if you hold a team to 100 points, you should win,

the flip side of it is the Lakers in the second half scored 49 points. and in say 1925, if you score 49 points and a half, you are leaving yourself susceptible for a loss. You mentioned the amount of threes that they took, 51, making only 15 of them. And it meant that they actually shot 22 of 39 inside the arc. It is against a team. Charlotte does not have much in the way of rimbrose.

protection, you know, in the period where we thought Mark Williams was going to be a Laker. We did note that protecting the lane is not his strong suit as a defender as a player. And, you know, he demonstrated that when he when he was on the wrong end of an absolute monster dunk by LeBron who caught Mark Williams, his ex-teamate's body on that play. Technically true. But what I do think also it demonstrates is being 22 of 39 from inside the arc, but 15 of 51, it's not just that you missed a lot of threes. It's the shot selection.

Correct. The threes were often terrible. A lot of stepback threes from Luke in particular. If you're going to take that many, you need to make more. Austin Reeves, who was frankly having a pretty bad game before he got to. ejected, which might have in part led to the first person. I think it was a large part. Absolutely.

Austin was before getting ejected, two of seven from behind the arc. It just, they, I think they did not do a very good job looking to manufacture the shots that they missed. And I think that is in part the reason why they missed so many of those shots is a lot of them weren't that good of ones in the first place. Standing around and all that kind of stuff. I think your point that you were making, we'll get in a lot of the individual performances here,

and some of the big picture stuff, look, Lakers play again tonight in, you know, we're recording obviously on Thursday, for the audio version of this appear on Friday. Like, Lakers are in Portland. Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday and Thursday, sorry, Thursday and Friday.

And Lakers are in Portland on Thursday night. So this, you talk about Luca and LeBron seeming like they played sort of separate games. And I think intellectually, nobody should be surprised by this. You know, the last two really big pairings like, you know, oh, look at these superstar pairings, Lakers put together. LeBron James, Anthony Davis, very easy to figure out how that works, you know, offensively, the flow of that, whatever.

Who has the ball? Where does the ball go? All that kind of stuff. That's not hard. Kobe Bryant, Powell Gasol. Same thing. It's the same dynamic. Easy to know who's got the ball, where, how that's going to flow, the positions.

There's much more overlap in what LeBron and Luke could do. And while the potential, I think, for great stuff is certainly there. It also means a longer feeling out process. It's much more similar to when LeBron and Wade got together for the first time. And Miami went nine and, I think it was nine and eight before they went on like a 20 and two run or something like that. Now, the Lakers don't have necessarily that kind of time in, you know, they're down to 29 games left in the season.

But bigger picture, when you figure out, like, you know, what Luca and LeBron are doing, it's like, it makes a lot of sense that this could take a minute to figure out. And that's before you get into Rust with Luca. clearly that was there. The shot was definitely off. And then in the next segment, I want to get into some of the structural stuff that you saw.

You mentioned Austin being chucked out of the game and what went downhill afterwards. I think, you know, you say like they're related 100%, because it gets to some of the other things the Lakers missing when he's in there. So anyway, it's a horrible, horrible night for the Lakers. When we get back, we'll start getting into some of these individual performances and a weakness that while we've been focused on the center position, maybe something else the Lakers have to think about. We'll get to it next.

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Zedravo, everybody, when you open up your email. I don't know how to say newsletter in Slovenian, but perhaps somebody can leave it in the chat. So that's something you can do to stay connected to the program. Austin Reeves was not having a good night. I think he was absolutely frustrated at the lack of whistles. And he was, in fact, fouled on the play. You could see Yusip Nurkich got his arm, pulled the arm away.

I guess I could see it was close enough to the ball. I guess you could see why the ref missed it. But Reeves was correct. and he certainly earned the first technical he said after the game he got it he understood you know you're yelling at it you walk up the guy you you make the you know and you're yelling the second one he was walking away but he did turn his head and he didn't stop talking and did it look like a quick trigger sure should the referee probably have let it go maybe I don't know but like the point

is Reeves got to be smarter than that that is 100% on AR. If you're going to keep talking and you probably shouldn't, you can't look back at the ref. And when the whistle blew, Reeves didn't look surprised

he walked right off the court. I think Austin knew that he messed up. First of all, according to English to Slovenian translation via Google newsletter is Glacilo. So look for everybody's the Bravo. look for your glaselos if you subscribe to locked on. And I don't know if that's correct or not,

but it's really the thought that counts. I think it's the effort that we're putting. No, I've decided it's glaselos. So Zedravo, everybody, look for your glaselos when you subscribe to locked ondaily.com. Secondly, it's not just that Austin looked back while he was talking. He was extremely demonstrative on the original tech. The thing that got him teed up in the first place was very over the top.

So that's the point we have to realize you cannot talk. Walk away. You cannot talk at all. I mean, you're damn sure better make sure that if you're going to keep talking, it's got to be very calm, very like, okay, my bad body language, let me talk. Like, if you're going to. If I'm watching on TV, it looks. like I'm being super polite, even if I'm mother effing the referee right down there. And things went really downhill after that ejection. To put it in perspective, 317 left in the third quarter when Austin was ejected. The Lakers were up 65 to 57. They had been up 13 in that third quarter. Charlotte then went on an 18 to one run over

about six minutes that was eventually broken up at least a bit by a Rui three. But the game absolutely went sideways afterwards. I mean, recognized before, Austin was not playing particularly well in this game to begin with, but you lose a lot of what you were looking to do from a rotational and an execution standpoint, just not having Austin there, even if he's not playing well. And I'll tell you what I think. It was it was noticeable. during the game, but I think it became even more so with Rith Reeves out. One thing, obviously the Lakers center is an issue. You know, this was not the best Jackson Hayes game.

He was fine. You know, he, you know, but he was limited as sort of, you know, at 18 minutes of the floor. I think they felt like there were some matchup issues made it harder to play. Alex Lenn was okay. It was fine. But the Lakers, you know, they're short at center. Like this is not a mystery.

This is not something. that is sneaking up on anyone. The other skill set that the Lakers don't necessarily have. Even with Luca, Luca will get better at this as he plays himself, hopefully back into better health and just gets more comfortable and his legs back and stuff, is they just don't have a lot of off the ball sort of dribble penetration.

Part of the reason they took 51-3s is because as a group, it's just kind of hard for them to like constantly be breaking. They don't have like Lamello, for example. You know, you could see just, you know, the handles, the quickness, whatever gets, you know, it has a little bit easier to get in the lane. LeBron capable sometimes of using his size, Luka can put it, but they don't have a ton of that. And so just for my, I think they're going to have to do a better job of,

and they no longer have Anthony Davis as a big tall person. that creates some of those opportunities to get in the paint. So JJ and the staff are going to have to do a much better job, particularly with Luca and LeBron together, of finding ways to engineer ball movement, player movement, and opportunities to put the ball on the floor to get into the paint off the dribble. I agree with what you're saying in terms of the idea that the Lakers lack dribble penetration. I think that is something that they were hoping to gain more.

of with Luca. And I agree with you. It's something that Luca, once he is fully back up to game shape, is something that'll bring more to with the Lakers. I don't necessarily buy that that's the reason for this many threes, just because the Lakers have been lacking it for, you know, the last few years and haven't put up threes at this level. No, I'm not saying it's the only reason. I'm saying, I think it contributes to it. And remember, before in games, you always, you know, it was much easier to generate paint touches and paint looks when you have Anthony Davis there. And so it's like, I just think tonight take him away, you don't have as much of that in the, you know, in the high post, in the low post or whatever. And so you have to generate a lot of

that in different ways. And Austin, while it's not necessarily super conventional looking all the time, one of their better guys putting the ball on the floor and getting, you know, through that initial layer of defense and into the paint. I don't. necessarily think this is going to be a massive long-term problem. The Lakers are still not super duper athletic, but again, we kind of already knew that. I just think it was kind of a kind of like symbolic or whatever the right word is. Part of the reason they were shooting so many threes tonight, it was in part because I think it reflects that skill set deficit that they have as a group.

Okay, this is where the evening has taken us in the chat, George Fair. Is DeLo better than Luca? All right, relax. I mean, you will not find two members of the LA media who have been more consistent, bigger proponents of DeAngelo Russell than the two hosts of this show. We have spent, I mean, if you count both tenures DeLo had in L.A. because we covered both of them, we were much more on the focus on what Delo does well,

instead of obsessing over the things he doesn't. Settle down, George. He's not going to look at that. No. No. And I get it. Tonight was upsetting. Settle down. Yeah. It's not really close.

LeBron was plus 13, I believe. plus 12. No, LeBron was minus for Jackson and Hayves was plus four. Luca was plus 13. Right. And Jackson and Hayes was plus 12, but they lost the LeBron minutes pretty bad. And they lost the non-Luca minutes pretty bad. Well, that was a direct correlation, by the way.

The run when Austin got ran, that actually coincided with, I believe, LeBron out there and Lucas sitting. Yeah. So like, you know, Lucas still had eight assists. He had 11 turnovers. Five of 18 is not good. He, but the six, you know, six turnovers, I'm sorry, I did that wrong. Eight assists, eleven rebounds, six turnovers, but a lot of that was front loaded. And, you know, he will get better. I'm not worried about Luca. And I'm not even necessarily worried about the long, term prospects of the team. I don't think Wednesday's game changes that. I do think it is a reminder that the arc of getting to where you want to be is potentially bumpier, less arky, less smooth than fans might want. And they have some, again, they have got some skill set deficits, like an attacking

thrashing offensive wing would go, would be helpful here. You know, kind of, you know, somebody pointed out in the chat. That's what Max Christie is doing in Dallas right now. Let's get into some of the things that we're looking for against Portland and moving forward coming up next. One thing that jumped out of me, Brian, tonight, the, I said before, Luca and LeBron seemed on very different pages in this game.

And it wouldn't have jumped out at me. as much tonight or been more perplexing if they hadn't seemed, you know, more relatively synergized in the first two games they played together. Like, in the first, I don't know, maybe three or four minutes of the game max, you had a sequence where LeBron had a hit ahead to Luca and then Luca had a hit ahead to LeBron. and then for the remaining 44 minutes, I can barely even in my mind's eye remember them being on the court together, much less anything they really did.

Like there's nothing that stands out good or bad, just period, where it even feels like you remember them working off each other. And I recognize in both Utah games there was not a ton. of it between Luca's minutes restrictions and how lopsided both games became. And there's also two

JJ's had a substitution pattern in the first quarter where both LeBron and Luca have been sitting at the same time. So there's a couple minutes they wouldn't be on the court together, which side note, I find a little weird. Well, I mean, the first couple of games they did that

was minutes limit. But I think that, I mean, that's an interesting question. I don't know, you know, we know necessarily with the game tonight as well, like we might as well just mention it now. There are two ways of looking at this. Like, you want Luca and LeBron, you're one of the two on the floor at all times. Okay, well, if you do that, that's a totally legitimate way to handle this, by the way. I don't know problem with it. But if you do it that way, you limit the number of minutes that they play together because, you know, you're trying to, you know, you don't want each one of those guys playing 41 minutes a night.

So the other way to do it is you try to buy a few minutes with neither of them on the court, maximize the amount of time they're on the floor together, and use Reeves as kind of a bridge with that second unit and the other guys and see what you can do. And I don't, I think that that could work as well. some of it gets to in the end how quickly and how effective can you make the Luca LeBron combination? And part of, I think, where that starts with is figuring out ways to get them interacting a little bit more on the floor. I think you're right. That, I mean, again, I want to make sure it's understood.

The time where it's just Austin in the first half, we're talking about 90 seconds to two minutes. It's not like JJ's keeping both LeBron and Luke off the floor for like a four or five minutes stretch, which would be frankly insane. Right. But I just think as a strategy, I actually think it's defensible because you are then maximizing the amount of time they play together. It can be. But especially early on, I would rather see them get the most amount of minutes together possible. and then if you have to tweak the rotation a little bit from there, fine. But they need, again, we're only talking about a couple minutes per half, if at all.

I've really noticed it more in the first half than the second. And then things got thrown completely off the rails tonight because Austin ended up getting ejected. But even after Austin got ejected, you would think that that would be a time where it could feel like the two of them might synergize more, work more in tandem, if, because you have no other choice. Like it would almost force it to start happening. And it, we are very, very early in this incarnation of the Lakers. So I think there is a danger to read too much into anything, frankly, even positive, much negative.

it is just something that jumped out at me tonight. Just how in like almost separate spheres, the two of them seemed while they were on the court together. There are going to be times when it looks like, you know, go back to the Wade LeBron thing, like, you know, the criticism of everybody had, your turn, my turn, your turn, my turn. And that sort of like weird kind of deference

nobody's quite sure how we're doing this sort of thing. And sometimes it kind of will look like that, like just because sometimes LeBron's going to have the ball on his hand. Sometimes Luke, and I think the one thing early, especially the Lakers, you certainly could not accuse the Lakers of early in this game was being too deferential to trying to get Luca the ball, let Luca, like, somebody had an open shot, they took it.

There were a couple of, you know, two, three possessions where Luca didn't have the ball at all. He still has a ton of gravity. He still talks about it. But if somebody has an open shot, they were taking it, they weren't force-feeding Luca. And the one thing that I would really be cautious against is the easiest thing to do in this situation would be to actually try to maximize the amount of time with LeBron and Luca play separately so that you can have each one of them kind of do more of what they're used to, more of

the game. That I think is the easiest natural sort of temptation, whatever, and it's also the one that I would resist until you can't, you just can't anymore. Because the potential thing that makes it special is what they could do playing together. And so you just got to work through the pains of that and get there and figure it out. I don't ultimately. I don't ultimately. know what that looks like. But I mean, you're not, you certainly can't three games in, give up and be like, well, just give them as much time separately as possible. Like, no, figure it out.

No, the only reason you would look to stagger LeBron and Luke at any real discernible degree would be because, say, Austin is hurt and you need to stagger the minutes between them. So you always have at least one plus ball handler slash play. maker like but that's one of those necessity is you know necessity being the mother invention that sort of thing like you you are forced to do that otherwise what you really are forced to do right now is work through the bumps like figure out what what is it that makes lebron and lucca um i don't want to say difficult to pair because i think they can figure it out but like what are the things

that quite literally need to be figured out okay work through it. And it sucks to have to use regular season games that matter as a live dress rehearsal of sorts. But that's what happens when you do a midseason trade. Right. What I think everybody was hoping, we got it in that first Utah game. I think what everybody is hoping is that they could sort of go through the growing pains and because the teams they're playing so bad. Like you still win the games anyway,

and they almost got away with it for two of the three games, which would have been a decent enough result. Instead, they lost two of the three, and you get bit for that. These games are going to hurt potentially in April. When you look up at the standings, you're going to God, I wish they'd managed to beat the Jazz and Hornets going into and coming out of the All-Star break.

You know, it's a crazy thought. And I want to make it clear that I am not giving my opinion of who won the trade overall globally. But small sample size, so far Max Christy's been the best player in this trade. Yeah. It's crazy just because, I mean, you, you and I think especially I have been a big proponent of Max, like I've been a big proponent since his rookie year. I wanted him to play more. and I think there are a lot of Dallas fans who likely just didn't really realize how good Max can be just because they haven't seen him play a lot.

And this is the first season he really played consistently at all. And on balance, I think Luca is going to emerge a better player than Max Christie. But it is so far, Max Christie has been the most impactful player in this trade, which is, if nothing else, man, good for him for, making good on his opportunity in both spots this season. Yeah, I mean, I think you certainly, a short, again, small sample size, he's played the best.

And then, you know, it's there's just a lot, like you see, like Christy was somebody who, when he moved in the lineup, it took second, but then you could see, like, everybody kind of adjusted and moved, you know, right, and moved pieces into the right spots. Defensively, and again,

the Lakers wasn't great in the second half, but they did only give up 100 points in this game. They should have won. You know, you saw what Charlotte was doing, where they would hunt Luca and then, you know, run it, you know, bring it, make force a double, then try to swim the ball around a lot before he got tossed. Right. They were, you know, and that's, you know, the Lakers will see over the course of four or five or six games exactly how teams are attacking them. And they will have to make some adjustments and that'll have like all of this stuff is going to look very different in 10 games.

The problem is the Lakers are just going into a stretch where they're playing a, you know, a ton of really good teams. Like it's just, it's a hard schedule. This is why I've been harping on how important it is. The Lakers gave themselves at least a little bit of, if you were doing this while you were scrambling to stay in the play-in, the vibes would be very different. Yeah, in the second half in particular,

the zone defense that Charlotte was thrown out was, and we've seen this during the season, this is not anything new, but it becomes more magnified. A terrible team against zones all season. But it becomes even more magnified when you don't have Austin just because, like you said before, you lose one of your better guys

when it comes to penetrating a zone. And then in particular, on a night where the Lakers are badly struggling to hit threes, and you're down one of your better penetrators, you are going to find yourself very flummoxed by a zone. And this is also, too, one of those nights where you miss AD as just a potential focal point where if you can get the ball inside, it can wreck everything Charlotte's trying to do with a zone.

Whoever's trying to do. He did have 40-something points last time they played. So, all right. So an ugly loss for the Lakers, a tough night for Austin Reeves, a rough night shooting the ball, certainly from Luca. He did play 33 minutes, which is a Lakers high. That number is just going to keep rising, hopefully as he continues to get a little more. He did a little grimace, I think it was the second half that I think is going to worry everybody a little bit.

Also, for what it's worth, too, because there had been some question about LeBron playing tonight. His availability had been questionable heading into the game obviously did end up playing. I don't think in the grand scheme of things. Like, you know, LeBron played fine. I mean, and it's crazy that at 40, 26, 7, 11 is... He was certainly, he was... Yeah, I thought he was pretty good. I mean, like, he was certainly the best of the Lakers tonight.

Oh, absolutely. I just mean it wasn't like a vintage LeBron game. I don't mean to be critical of his game. No, it was just a regular one game. No, but I mean, like it wasn't even vintage LeBron, I think, for this season. I know what you mean. But the point I was really going to get at is LeBron did not look like he was laboring at all. And that's a really good thing.

Whether he plays in Portland, we will see no expectation that Luca won't. But with all of these guys, we're just going to see who ends up taking the floor. Doesn't help if they lost tonight. It doesn't help. And like, if you win the game, you have a little more flexibility,

sit some guys against the Blazers. Portland was as good as any team in the NBA going into the break. So this is no easy game for the Lakers up. Locked on Lakers on YouTube. It's where you can go hang out with over 32,000 subscribers who are all hoping for a better effort tonight than

against the Hornets on Wednesday. Remember, sign up for the newsletter at Lockedondaily.com. Check out the postcast with Dave Palais. We'll see everyone after the game in Portland.