Well, not many might have foreseen this coming. After having won their previous 2 matchups against the Brooklyn Nets this season, the Los Angeles Lakers could have recently increased the number to 3. Instead, the LA squad ended up recording a close 111-108 loss. Some might attribute this to the lack of sufficient players, as 5 of the athletes, including LeBron James, were ‘OUT’ for the recent game. However, JJ Redick wasn’t willing to accept that excuse.

The Lakers’ head coach participated in the press conference after the recent loss. During the Q&A session, he was asked if there was a specific aspect that wasn’t happening tonight. Redick’s answer? “I think it was a very low-level communication game. For our team, yeah.” Yeah …

With regards to the team being shorthanded, the coach sidelined that excuse by adding, “Yeah, I mean, I don’t think being shorthand is an excuse for how we played basketball tonight”. In the end, the only thing JJ Redick was willing to blame was the ‘mentality’ of the players who played in the game.

“No, I think it was just an overall sort of mentality just to take shortcuts tonight. We just wanted to take shortcuts,” said the 40-year-old HC. “They scored 20 points on us gambling. They had 16 offensive rebounds. We’d ball watched all night. We said no dare shots. I can’t, I mean, go through it. They probably made 6-7 uncontested 3s. Just shortcuts. You want to continue to win in the NBA? You got to do the hard stuff”.

The Lakers squad, as a whole, had a plus/minus rating of -3. The shorthanded team played just 9 players and relied heavily on 6 of them. While Redick did not blame the absent players, there were bound to be mistakes without them. Austin Reaves fumbled the most. He went 3-14 (21.4%) with his field goals, 1-5 (20.0%) with his three-pointers, and 10-11 (90.9%) with his free throws. On top of that, his 3 turnovers left his plus/minus rating to be -10.

In LeBron James’ absence, it was up to Luka Doncic to lead the team efficiently. However, even the Slovenian could not make full use of this chance properly, as he went 8-26 (30.8%) with his field goals, 3-10 (30.0%) with his three-pointers, and 3-4 (75.0%) with his free throws. On top of that, he recorded 5 turnovers!

Throughout the game, one could see that emphasis was placed on layups. Unfortunately, many of them did not connect. Therefore, a team that was 20 games below .500 was able to take advantage and deliver an unexpected win to themselves.

The shortcuts and overall gameplay issues could have been handled better. That is, if LeBron James had been there to lead the team. Unfortunately, in light of the groin injury he recently sustained, the player will be away from the court for at least 1-2 weeks. Nevertheless, JJ Redick did not choose to blame LeBron.

The coach is certainly not pleased with the loss. However, he might be glad of the fact that the real reason behind the loss was coming out to take responsibility.

Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves admit to their mistakes after the Lakers-Nets game: “That’s my fault”

In the aftermath of the matchup, Luka Doncic also addressed the media. Along with passing his reaction to the game’s officiating, the Slovenian also gave his thoughts to JJ Redick’s message about communication. He accepted his fault in the lapse by stating, “What JJ just said about communication today, that wasn’t on point, and that’s…. it’s my fault, and we should (have) done better than that”.

As for Austin Reaves, the 26-year-old admitted, “Just thought that I played incredibly bad. Yeah it’s really, you know, about as much as I can say about that. It’s frustrating, not helping your team win, and, you know, When Bron’s out, I gotta be better, and I wasn’t”.

Even after the loss, the Lakers are 40-23, and hold the 3 seed in the Western Conference chart. Therefore, if the team took any lessons from the recent game, the same can be applied in the coming games without worrying about how to get further up on the points chart.