The Los Angeles Lakers began life without LeBron James, who’s expected to miss at least one to two weeks with a strained groin, on Monday with a 111-108 road loss to the Brooklyn Nets.
Luka Dončić finished with 22 points, 12 assists and 12 rebounds, his second triple-double since joining the Lakers, but without James on the floor the Nets threw everything at Dončić defensively and the Lakers weren’t able to make them pay.
It’s not a terribly surprising development given the circumstances. These superstars that get blitzed by defenses all the time can only do so much if the other guys aren’t taking advantage of the overloaded defense by making the 4-on-3 plays on the backside.
That takes timing and rhythm, the old cliche of everyone being on the same page, which is easier said than done for a team like the Lakers that has added such a dominant piece like Dončić and is throwing out a lot of lineups that haven’t played a ton of time together.
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Now, when you have two players as intelligent and skilled as Dončić and James on the court, especially together, you can cover up for a lot of these “getting to know one another” kinks that typically take time to work out.
But without James — to say nothing of his own production — the subtlest of connections that keep an NBA offense flowing become a lot more difficult to execute on the fly with a starting lineup (Dončić with Austin Reaves, Dalton Knecht, Gabe Vincent and Alex Len) that, prior to Monday night, hadn’t played a single minute together, per Cleaning the Glass.
It wasn’t just James that was out, either. It was Dorian Finney-Smith and Rui Hachimura, too. And just when Jaxson Hayes was starting to really settle in as the exact kind of short-roll connector that can, and often does, slice up these blitzing defenses, he was out, too, and it was Len in that spot.
Still, Lakers coach JJ Redick was not in the mood for excuses following the game. Redick categorized his team’s performance as a “very low-level communication game” and said “being shorthanded is [not] an excuse for how we played basketball tonight.”
“I think it was just an overall mentality to take shortcuts tonight,” Redick said. “They scored 20 points on us gambling [defensively]. They had 16 offensive rebounds. We ball-watched all night. They probably made six or seven uncontested 3s. Just shortcuts. You want to be a good team, you want to win in the NBA, you got to do the hard stuff.
“We couldn’t even pass to each other,” Redick continued as he became visibly frustrated. “We couldn’t enter our offense. Running ball screens literally at half court … I don’t know what we were doing.”
Dončić, despite being extremely effective as a playmaker and downhill creator, has not shot well with the Lakers, and he wasn’t shooting well with the Mavericks before he was traded either. He made just eight of 26 shots on Monday while missing seven of his 10 3-pointers.
“[We] should’ve made better decisions,” Dončić said. “I think we started the game doing a really good job, good decisions. But then we just kind of let go of the rope. We got comfortable.”
This would’ve been a big night for Reaves to step up in James’ absence but he was off as well, finishing 3 for 14 and 1 for 5 from 3.
“I just thought I played incredibly bad,” Reaves admitted. “When Bron’s out, I’ve got to be better, and I wasn’t, and that’s one of the reasons we lost.”
The Nets (22-42) don’t make life easy on anyone. They finally seem to have embraced the incentive they have to tank the rest of the way and lost seven straight before Monday. But even when they lose to good teams they push them to the limit.
Within that seven-game losing streak, they got up 22 on the Warriors and led Oklahoma City in the fourth quarter. It’s not shocking they would beat Lakers team playing without James, even if Redick and company aren’t going to use that as an excuse, as they shouldn’t.
Because the reality is, James is going to be out for a decent bit, and the Lakers’ upcoming schedule is no cakewalk with their next six games coming against Milwaukee, Denver, Phoenix, San Antonio, and Denver and Milwaukee again.
And these are crucial games, to say the least. With the loss on Monday, the Lakers (40-23) fell behind Denver, which beat Oklahoma City, into No. 3 in the West (tied in the loss column), and is just one game up on No. 4 Memphis and two up on No. 5 Houston with 19 games remaining.
