Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - Luka, Reaves Struggle as Lakers Lose 111-108 to Nets... Redick Rips His Squad
Episode Date: March 11, 2025The Lakers were, of course, without LeBron James and Rui Hachimura Monday in Brooklyn, but they were also without Dorian Finney-Smith and Jaxson Hayes as well. That's a lot of rotation and size in st...reet clothes, and even with Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves in uniform for the Lakers, it's easy to see how the Lakers could lose even to a lousy team like the Nets, which is exactly what they did, 111-108. There are times when a coach will look at the context—so many missing players, coming off a tough loss in Boston, generally playing well, important games coming up—and downplay the loss. Basically call it an aberration, give the team the ol' attaboy, and move on. JJ Redick didn't do that. Instead, he was as critical of his Lakers as he's been all year. He accused them all game of trying to take shortcuts, and not doing as a team what is required to win. He slammed the team's lack of communication, and generally gave them no space to wallow in their current state. (Which, it should be noted, includes a clearly-not-100-percent Luka.) Big picture, the game was lost because Reaves and Dončić were wildly inefficient from the field (11-40 combined from the floor). Halfway decent shooting from either/both is probably enough to win. And then the Lakers turned the ball 15 times, and allowed 16 offensive rebounds. Again, clean up one of those and it's probably enough to win the game. But Redick was really talking about much more than this game. He was reminding the Lakers that the bar has been raised. Winning as much as they have has elevated what's possible for this season, and with it, the acceptable standard of performance as a team, no matter who is available to play. He's reminding them that with players out, they need to control the stuff they can control. Sometimes shots fall, sometimes they don't. Sometimes players make the wrong read, or dribble the ball off their foot. But communication? That's easy to control, and isn't the provenance of any single player on the roster. Redick's reaction is a great sign for measuring how much he believes in the potential of the season, and how far things have come over the course of the year. HOSTS: Andy and Brian Kamenetzky SEGMENT 1: Reaves and Luka shoot poorly as the Lakers lose in Brooklyn. SEGMENT 2: Why Redick reacted the way he did. SEGMENT 3: Why no Koloko? 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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Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hey, everyone, welcome to Locked on Lakers for Tuesday, Brian Komenetsky, Andy Keminetsky,
short-handed Lakers lose in Brooklyn.
How did JJ Redick react?
Very interesting reaction.
We'll tell you about it next.
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subscribers, Andy, are all wondering what the next couple of weeks you're going to look like
with the very short-handed Lakers.
No LeBron James, obviously, no Rui Hachamura, no Dorian Finney Smith, no Jackson Hayes.
So four very important members of the rotation missing.
And that means a 11-108 loss.
to the Brooklyn Nets in Brooklyn, not a good night by any stretch of the imagination,
whether for the two remaining stars for the team,
and Luca Donchurch and Austin Reeves, or the rest of the guys either.
This was, it was an ugly game.
It was an ugly game.
I do think if you are looking, and I'm not even trying to spin this glass half full,
I actually mean it.
I think there were some positives in the way Gabe Vincent played.
Jordan Goodwin played.
I thought Dalton Connect played well.
Like Jared Vanderbilt, 7.6 rebounds, two assists and a steal.
Like, if you are looking for something positive from this game,
the supporting guys who likely will have some role in the playoffs,
actually I thought played, execution was lacking across the board as a team.
And that's something we're going to get into that JJ Reddick was absolutely
livid about after this game. But if you're looking at individual performances and did you
step up on a night where you needed to contribute because four main guys are out, I think Goodwin,
Vincent Connect, and Vando all did enough. And in the case of Goodwin and Vincent, I think more than
enough where you look at them and say they were positives, but as a team, they did not play well
together and Luca and Reeves struggled. And that Adley, that's really where I was getting at.
It's, you know, we'll get to the team aspects of it. It's not that nobody played well. It's that
the team, and this ties directly into JJ's reaction. I mean, first and foremost, the Lakers
lose this game because Austin Reeves, in particular,
And then Luca, especially from a shot making standpoint, the two of those guys combined to shoot 11 of 40.
As Jim Anderson notes in the chat, like, they didn't need big knights from AR and Luca.
They just needed not bad ones.
And those guys, you know, Luca finished with a triple double, but, you know, not all triple doubles are created equal.
And this one was so wildly inefficient at eight for 26 from the floor.
This is too many empty shots.
And those two guys, as your best players, need to be the best players on the floor.
And they were not, at least not consistently enough.
So I'm not trying to pin this on, you know, not getting enough from Trey Jemison or something like that.
The stars needed to play better and they didn't.
I think Luca side note is banged up.
And, you know, I mean, respect that he played.
but for Monday's show, I was saying that I would have been okay if they had sat Luca for this game.
If they had any concerns at all about his back and the soreness that he's been dealing with becoming more of an issue,
just because as much as this is one of those games against Brooklyn, you know, had been on a seven-game losing streak,
this is one of the games that you write in pen as a win when pacing out.
out the wins and losses trying to maintain that second seed or stay as high as you want.
This is one of those wins, one of those games that would be really disappointing to end up in
the loss column as we are learning now. But even more disappointing would have been Luca out for
a week to two weeks along with LeBron and Rui because his back got worse. I don't know that his back
got worse during this game, but he looked like a guy dealing with some type of physical ailment.
And frankly, it played over 41 minutes in the games.
And frankly, I am concerned that Austin is not all the way back physically from that
calf injury that cost him a couple of games.
I'll say this much, he is way the hell out of rhythm if he's feeling fine.
No, he's played horribly and said as much after the game.
I mean, I just finished the Luca thing.
I thought, you know, he kind of looked like he tweaked his ankle.
I think that was in the first half.
and I was just laboring, I think, is a fair way to put it.
The flip side is the Lakers, especially if Reeves isn't providing him any support, and he wasn't.
It was weird.
The two of them filled up the stat lines pretty well, except their shooting was so off.
Right.
It created so many empty possessions.
Like Austin Reeves finished the night with.
17 points, 10 of them were at the line. I mean, he was three of 14 from the field,
one of five from behind the arc. Like you said, Luca, A, of 26, three of 10 from behind the
arc. It's not that the two of them didn't find ways to contribute. You know,
Luke had a triple double. Austin came within screaming distance of it. The problem is,
there was a lot of messiness that, you know, sometimes the counting stats actually matter.
Well, like I said, I mean, not all triple doubles are created equal. I don't.
think Luca would tell you he played a particularly good game. But I will say this. Like,
you know, part of the reason I think Luca looked like he was laboring so much was because
while I agree with you, Goodwin, you know, had particularly early, you know, what did he hit? His first
four threes, you know, came out really hot shooting. Vincent came out really hot shooting. They
don't have a lot of shot creation other than those guys to provide kind of an outlet. It's like
Luca's got to set you up to make shots.
And if Reeves isn't providing that sort of supplementary shot making and shot creation,
it puts a lot on Luca, particularly when the Lakers are playing by necessity,
because those are the players they have available,
they're playing really a very small lineup.
And so you need to be able to find ways to generate more offense without.
Luca having to do it all.
And the Lakers failed in that regard.
They also turned the ball over too much.
They did not turn Brooklyn over on the other side of the ball.
And, you know, you put those things together, too many empty possessions, too many
turnovers.
They gave up 16 offensive rebounds, which, again, is a function of playing very small.
That's tough.
I mean, the fact that they were even in this game with 11 of 40 from those guys and what
all the stuff I just mentioned, is kind of a testament to how bad Brooklyn is.
Yeah.
I mean, for all the criticism, JJ has, it is definitely a testament to how bad Brooklyn is.
And I guess, I guess if you're looking for any type of silver linings, because we know how a lot of
Laker fans feel about DeAngelo Russell, he didn't have his revenge game.
Although, you know, he's may, I don't remember the first time he played the Lakers as a member
of the Nets.
Maybe he had it before.
There could always be a third revenge game after he, event.
eventually joins the Lakers again and then gets traded to the Mets again.
So, you know, there's time for all this.
But Dilo was two of nine from the field, two of six from behind the arc, seven assists,
eight points.
I mean, he didn't light the world on fire if you're looking for.
He didn't hit a late three that was pretty important.
It was, but I mean, this was not a lot of ones that were also important.
Right.
This is not a big game for Dilo.
And, you know, said before, there, the supporting guys,
I think if you are, again, looking for something from a disappointing night, particularly from your stars, that you can feel good about.
It's that those guys stepped up, I think, for the most part, when they were needed.
I think there were a variety of reasons that Luca and Austin didn't manage to, some of which are more potentially unsettling than others.
But either way, it was a night where, especially considering the competition, you had hope that even if it wasn't going to be easy, those two could find a way to make it happen against that Nets team.
I mean, you could make an argument that Luca and Austin, at least on paper, are the two best players on the court.
I mean, Luca's without question the best.
It's really a matter of, do you think there's anyone on Brooklyn, that?
that is definitively better than Austin, even if you do, there couldn't be that many.
No, and the answer to that is, unless you think Cam Johnson is.
And so, yeah, Camp Thomas, maybe you could say, but he didn't play.
So, I mean, you look at, I think of the two, I am currently more worried about Austin,
three games since returning from the calf injury, two of 13 against the Knicks,
five of 12 against Boston, three of 14 against Brooklyn.
So he is clearly not right.
Needs those couple days before the Lakers get to the back to back.
Lakers are going to need him to play better.
I mentioned in the open, JJ's reaction to this game,
I thought was both interesting and very important in a bunch of different ways.
Get to it next.
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So there are times, Andy, when coaches in a situation like this, you got a team that's got a bunch of games coming up, the difficult schedule, played lost, just lost your star player for a couple weeks at one of your stars at least.
And so on and so on and so on and so on would give his team the old attaboy.
Let him know that's a heck of a ball club on the other side.
And just a heck of a ball club.
Just trying to fill up your cups.
is we're going to fill up our cups and we're going to get back into it.
And, you know, kind of brush this off.
Because, I mean, yes, I mean, I understand it's the Brooklyn Nets.
They sort of suck and, you know, sort of suck.
And the Lakers still had the best player on the floor.
They are the team that came in with the, you know, the second seat in the West and all that kind of stuff.
Look at the players that Lakers put on the floor.
It was not a super high-end rotation.
But Reddick didn't do that.
Instead, he kind of lit into them as ferociously and as critically as he has really all year.
Maybe there's some other games that are close, but he was extraordinarily critical of their execution, of their attention to detail.
He basically said they worked short, tried to just do shortcuts all night and weren't invested in doing things the right.
right way. And what I think is beyond arguing about whether or not he's correct and not going to
argue with the guy, I just think it, to me, it says how much expectations and the standard and the
end goals have changed for this team. Because if you're not really expected to go anywhere,
then you blow off a game like this.
But now it's like, we don't care who is playing or not playing.
We have moved the bar.
You guys won 20 of 24.
That moved the bar.
And now everybody's got to play to this level.
And we didn't do it.
And I don't care who is on the floor and who isn't.
The level of execution is supposed to reach a certain standard.
And so I thought that was a really interesting aspect of how Reddick reacted post game.
I think you're totally right about the way the bar.
is raised. And we're also in a place right now where we're getting down to the wire. And if your seed
matters to you and for every team in the playoffs, or playoff race, including the Lakers, we've
talked about before, they're not going to risk LeBron coming back too early in order to try to
maintain a two seed. But they would prefer to remain as high up as they can. J.J. So I agree with
you. The standards have raised all that stuff. But we've also seen this.
this season. JJ, if they play poorly, like in terms of the results, but they generally play hard.
And in JJ's mind, they executed. He tends to not release.
He's tried to execute.
Right. Well, in his mind, he feels like they were executing at least at a, you must be this
tall to ride the ride level of execution. Like they're meeting the bare minimum of what he would
consider execution or a little bit higher, and they're playing hard, they're playing with a certain
amount of physicality and toughness that JJ has preached since training camp. He generally has,
I think, a pretty positive outlook on losses, even if we know the way JJ's wired,
they kill him. What JJ has zero patience for, and I think this game was a reminder is when,
in his mind, they don't play smart.
And a lot of times to him, lack of execution equals you played stupid.
Like he talked about, like, he talked about how they were setting screens so high that
they were essentially trapping themselves, like, and a lot of like doing some of the work
for Brooklyn for them and basically putting Austin and especially Luca in these places
where it's like, what are they supposed to do?
They're too far to any of it.
of their outlets to actually pass their way out of this double.
And he said that this was a game of very low communication.
And for what it's worth, Luca agreed afterward and said he needed to do a better job.
It's also an area where you are reminded of LeBron's absence because nobody on this team
communicates better, more clearly, more confidently than LeBron.
I mean, Luca, Reeves, these other guys, they're smart players.
You know, DFS is known to be super talkative on the floor.
Hell, even Trey Jemison talks a lot of the floor.
But nobody on this team is a better communicator than LeBron.
He was missed, I think, in that specific way tonight.
I think it's a great point.
And I think that's another reason why Reddick lit into them the way that he did.
because the reality is this is your lineup, you know, for a bit.
You know, hopefully Jackson Hayes is back on Thursday, you know, for the back to back.
And we can get into the, you know, who played and who did and all that kind of stuff.
But, you know, bottom line is you need Jackson Hayes back in the lineup because he is clearly their best center.
You know, hopefully Doreen Phine Smith is back.
relatively soon, if not Thursday, Friday, whatever it might be.
But Rui's going to be, you're without Rui for another week to 10 days, likely.
You're certainly without LeBron for another couple of weeks.
If you diagnose a problem and say like, you know, communication, talk, things like there.
There is no sport in which talking is not critical.
And if when you stop communicating, things break down.
Now, I expect, it's not surprising to me on a night where a lot of guys are getting a lot of minutes who are not used to playing with each other, who are not necessarily big rotation guys and all that stuff that, you know, communication breaks down.
Dalton connects, probably thinking about a lot of other stuff, you know, making sure not necessarily talking is not necessarily one of them.
You know, Goodwin is relatively new to the roster.
I can see why a lot of this stuff breaks down.
but Reddick is reminding him like your top communicator, Andy, to your point, is not going to be here for a couple weeks.
Collectively, we need to pick up the slack here.
Like there will, we can't drop the ball on stuff like that when LeBron isn't here.
And so again, the standard is raised.
Like we are now playing for stuff that is really important.
We need to win as many games as we can while our.
play are a couple of our best players are out of the rotation so detail work like this i don't care
how bad of a player you are you can still talk that stuff in control that stuff we can fix and
not doing that stuff correctly is not acceptable miss shots happens don't talk unacceptable
yeah they're in a they're just they're in a place now where you know those details
truly matter.
You know, it's super important.
Like, it's one thing to attempt shortcuts with LeBron and Luca on the floor.
Like, I'm not saying it's acceptable.
I'm just saying you can get away with it more when the people leading the way in these
shortcuts are LeBron and Luca, even if JJ's on the sideline going like, guys, seriously,
don't like whatever.
You can't get away with it when you don't have LeBron plus Rui, who is in some ways the
best finisher of plays on this team among non-stars when it comes to the ability to finish
inside, the ability to finish plays outside, like all of that without all the defense
that DFS provides, without Jackson Hayes, the easy points, like all, all that stuff.
They have to follow the steps now even more to a letter because,
they're not going to be able to out-talent team.
We're in a hopefully small sample-sized version of what we talked about earlier in the season
in that they didn't have the talent to paper over their shortcomings.
At full strength, they are certainly more talented than they were before,
but they are now at a place where they can't paper over anything.
They have to follow the game plan.
But I think, and this is something that I had talked about a lot,
like one of the things that has impressed me is how, despite
all of the guys coming in out of the lineup and AD was missing pre-trade and they were still
playing defense and Goodwin pops into the lineup. Now look, there's a difference between one guy
missing and you have one of these back end of the rotation guys coming in around more regular
players as opposed to three or two or three of them on the floor at the same time. I'm not saying
it's always the same. But one of the things. One of the things.
things that it impressed me about how they were playing is that didn't matter who was like
the level of execution stayed consistent throughout and that to me is something that impresses
me about good teams you know when injuries happen the system is sort of strong enough and the
collective you know understanding is there and so you can continue to be effective as a team
Tonight they didn't do that or you know tonight Monday night they didn't do that as effectively
And that's why they lost to a pretty lousy team it is kind of funny like other than the Celtics games
They've lost this one uh what is it this one charlotte Utah and the sixers like those are the teams that have beaten them
So maybe they just need to keep playing really really good teams um next though want to get back into the
Austin Reeves thing. And then we can have a talk about Alex Lenn because folks, we did kind of
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I was, I'm going to get shocked, but just because Brooklyn's a pretty big team.
I think we saw why Alex Lenn hasn't played that much.
It's not very good.
He made one very good pass out of the short roll to someone for a corner three.
I don't remember if it was Jordan Goodwin or Gabe Vincent.
That was an excellent play.
That was also Alex Lenn's highlight reel of the game.
He played one block, like one nice contest.
a shot there at the rim.
Yeah.
A good block.
I'll give me that.
Like 13 minutes, two rebounds,
two assists, a block, three fouls.
I talked about this on Twitter at Cambrothers.
To be clear,
I don't think if J.J.
had played Christian Coloco instead of Alex
Len, the Lakers necessarily
win this game.
But I do not understand from a
pure process standpoint
point why JJ is playing Alex Len over Christian Coloco at all.
I do not understand it.
Like when the starting lineup was announced, I tweeted out that it made sense for
Len to be the starter if your goal was to just try to not interrupt or try to avoid
disrupting the rotation as little as possible.
Coaches often do that if someone's missing.
they sub in someone who never play,
so the rest of the rotation is as normal as possible.
I did note, though, that it was not the move
if your goal was to please Laker fans.
I don't get it.
I honestly don't.
So people understand it's got nothing to do
with Christian Coloco's game tally or anything.
The Lakers do not have enough games left for him to hit 50.
Coloco has played 29 games.
Tonight was either...
Tonight was 30.
I was about say, when you dress and don't play, it still counts against your tally.
Lakers only have 19 games left.
So if he dressed for all of them, he's still...
If he's active, you might as well play him if you're concerned about the game count because it counts regardless.
I look at it.
I think two things were going on.
I think one is just...
Well, actually, I'll say three.
I think one is what you're talking about, this desire to keep as much of the rotation intact as possible.
I think...
I'm going to do that.
I think there is an element of trying to just get the physically largest guy out there because, again, Brooklyn's big.
Brookley's that is, as I said when they sign him, that is his best skill skill set is just being really, really big.
No, he's scary as hell.
By the way, I wouldn't want to fight him.
Oh, I would never say any of this stuff to his face.
And I pray he never watches this show.
because he's a terrifying person.
I, I, um, so I think the size thing, what, you know, trying to just counteract the,
the largeness of the Brooklyn lineup.
And then I think the third thing, there may have been an element and I can't obviously
confirm it.
I'm, I wasn't in Brooklyn to ask of like, if you are ever, you know, similar to like how
he gave Bronny a shot, like if you're ever going to get productive minutes.
from Alex Len.
Like this is the shot.
Like, okay, we,
he played a couple games.
It was tough.
We kind of threw him in there,
right?
When he first got here,
it didn't look very good.
Then he kind of dropped out.
Now we need another big.
It's pretty clear.
Let's give him a try.
And like,
this is the,
like this will be the game
that shows whether or not.
Okay.
And I would have predicted this outcome.
The thing that I think really bugs me about it isn't someone.
I agree with you.
It doesn't make it.
When you think you might be limited offensively based on who isn't there,
the one thing that you know Coloco can do that Len isn't going to provide you and that
Jemison isn't going to provide you because he's a below the rim kind of guy is a little bit of
vertical spacing.
And as sort of buzzwordy as that has become in the NBA,
Luca Donchich loves himself a lob threat.
And I would have wanted to see a legitimate lob threat on the floor for 15 minutes and see what would have happened.
I just think Coloco's been better in the minutes that he's played than Alex Lenn by like a mile.
Well, low bar to clear.
But like I said, whatever.
I mean, it's still been better.
Yeah, I didn't quite get.
I mean, it's rare in games like this where you can kind of pick on the rotation.
like some people were upset cam reddish didn't play i am not um i mean you could have put him in there
but he hasn't played in a long time i don't think he's the kind of guy who's necessarily going to
help out on a night like tonight a ton other than being a larger body um you know on the wing
you maybe maybe you get a couple of those rebounds and stuff like that um but the coloco thing
I think is definitely more of one to say that's a mistake.
I just don't understand it.
I mean, I'm just, I flat and the team is in,
they're obviously on the road for a while,
so there's no way for us we don't travel with the team to ask.
I'm just curious why,
because I just don't understand it at all.
I just don't get it.
I want to, before we were done.
And like this is so a massive deal.
I just don't understand it.
The other thing that I thought was,
was interesting and just as much of a housekeeping thing is the Lakers are going to practice.
A lot of times when you're this beat up, you're coming off a couple bad losses.
You don't have a ton of bodies to get even on the floor.
Coaches will maximize the amount of rest.
The Lakers are not going to do that.
They are going to practice ahead of Thursday's game in Milwaukee.
I don't know how vigorous that practice will be, but they are going to practice.
before we go,
I want to circle back to Rebes
because as you pointed out, Andy,
he was 3 or 14 against Brooklyn on Monday.
Since coming back from the injury,
5 of 12, 41% against Boston is his high watermark.
He has two games under 22% from the floor.
And while in this game,
he put up decent peripheral numbers,
How concerned are you about him?
He's coming back relatively quickly from a calf injury,
and those can be tricky.
I don't know.
I mean, he wasn't out long enough to make you worry about being that serious.
I mean, he missed two games.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
He came back fast enough.
You're like, right.
Doesn't seem like that big a deal.
It doesn't seem like that big of a deal.
I don't know if he is not.
If he's still working himself up to, like, physical form where, you know, we're in a situation
where he is healthy enough to play, but not healthy enough to feel like himself.
And therefore, that's getting in the way.
I don't know if he, we've talked before about him, him and Luca not having the same
synergy that Luca and LeBron had or that Austin and LeBron has.
So if he is feeling out of rhythm in a lot of these minutes and they are, they're
ratchet it up tonight where he plays with Luca or if he is in a slump.
I mean, Austin has had a few slumps this season.
I mean, the majority of this season has been good for Austin and at times quite good,
but he's been through a couple pretty pronounced slumps over the course of this season.
So maybe this is just one of them.
That it's on the heels, though, of an injury makes me wonder how much is still
lingering and how long it's going to be before, if that's the case, it stops because they really
need Austin to look more like himself.
And these last three games, like Boston was the best of them, and that was like a C plus level
game, tonight and the Knicks were somewhere between a D and an F. I mean, he just was,
if it were not for his ability to get to the line, and while I remember this, I want to have a
discussion for Wednesday about Luca and fouls and how he's handling non-calls.
Because James Worthy and Robert Orie has a lot.
Not well.
Not well, but they had some interesting comments about it.
And, you know, this is something that we all knew was part of the Luca experience.
But the last few games, we've seen him getting pretty demonstrative about it.
So I wanted to have a conversation for Wednesday, but we're not for the ability to,
get some of those calls and it took it took austin two and a half quarters before he got to the
line he would have he would have struggled to crack like six points in this game yeah and you know it's
he's got to be able to hit shots just because you know just getting the line tends to come with
too much dribbling um and and and sort of sucking up possessions with trying to get himself into
those positions to draw the contact um and it can gum up the offense so some of the
look at something to think about something to watch on Thursday and Friday we will of course be back
before then as the Lakers are practicing lock on Lakers on YouTube is where you go hang out with
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