The Los Angeles Lakers fell to the Golden State Warriors 111-97 in their preseason matchup on Tuesday. Anthony Davis paced the team with 24 points and 12 rebounds, while rookie Dalton Knecht came second with 19 points, another promising showing for the rookie. However, Golden State's shot-making proved too much for the Purple and Gold, who couldn't make enough shots to counter. Likewise, coach JJ Redick called out the Lakers for free-styling against the Warriors.
In a postgame interview, the coach “pointed to the Lakers' off-ball coverages as one of their primary struggles tonight,” per The Athletic's Jovan Buha on X, formerly Twitter. Likewise, Redick added that “when the team followed its pregame instructions, they were successful. When they didn't, the Warriors made them pay.”
“When we made stuff up, they hurt us,” the coach said.
The Lakers need to figure it out
Losing a preseason game isn't a major cause for concern, but how the Lakers lost to the Warriors troubled JJ Redick for good reason.
For instance, making things up on offense was one of their worst habits from last season, which caused them to lose too many winnable games, many against lesser teams. Even Redick caught on to this tendency before the Lakers hired him after the whole Dan Hurley fiasco.
During an NBA Summer League broadcast, the rookie head coach talked about the team's offensive efficiency while running sets.
“If you look at the efficiency numbers when you look at [the Lakers] playing ‘random' vs in sets, the sets had a higher efficiency,” Redick said.
Meanwhile, his comments about the team playing “random” dovetailed with Anthony Davis' complaints about Darvin Ham during their first-round loss to the Denver Nuggets last season.
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It was a series where these habits bit the Lakers, who led for most of its minutes but couldn't pull out the win because they started playing undisciplined basketball on both sides of the ball.
After the Lakers lost Game 2 of that series, Davis criticized Ham's offensive coaching, however indirectly.
“We've also had stretches where we don't know what we're doing on both ends of the floor,” the Lakers big man said, via Ron Gutterman for Lakers Nation.
In response, the former coach downplayed his remarks, which might have finally lost him the locker room, convincing the Lakers to fire Darvin Ham in the offseason. While unlearning bad habits takes time, the Lakers might not have enough of it as the preseason winds down, and they start to face teams in actual competitive games.
