PHOENIX — After his team’s defense was shredded in the third quarter of a 132-108 loss to the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday night, Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick was asked a simple, straight-forward question.
Does your group have enough players who are hard-wired to play with consistent effort and physicality the way a team like the Suns plays every night?
“No,” Redick replied.
The Phoenix defeat was L.A.’s third in its past five games and ninth of the season — all of them coming by double-digits.
Despite being 19-9 overall and No. 4 in the Western Conference, the Lakers’ cumulative point differential is just plus-8 through 28 games.
After improving during the second half of last season and finishing 17th in defensive rating in the NBA, the Lakers have experienced a backslide to begin this season — ranking 24th.
Things went sideways for L.A. after halftime in Phoenix, when the Lakers were outscored 45-29 in the third quarter and allowed the Suns to shoot 72.7% from the field (83.3% on 3-pointers) in the period.
“We practice this stuff enough,” Redick said of the defensive principles he wants to see. “We review this stuff enough. We show film on this stuff enough that to me, it like comes down to … just making the choice. It’s making the choice.
“There are shortcuts you can take or you can do the hard thing and you can make the second effort or you can sprint back or you can’t. It’s just a choice. And there’s a million choices in a game, and you’re very likely not going to make every choice correctly. But can you make the vast majority of them correctly? It gives you a chance to win.”
Austin Reaves returned from a three-game absence because of a strained left calf to score 17 points off the bench while on a minutes restriction. LeBron James led L.A. with 23 points and six assists in 26 minutes.
L.A. was missing two starters in Luka Doncic (left calf contusion) and Rui Hachimura (right groin soreness). Both players are considered day-to-day going into the Lakers’ Christmas Day matchup with the Houston Rockets.
While health has been a challenge for the Lakers all season, with James missing the first 14 games because of sciatica as the most glaring example, both James and Reaves insisted the Lakers must perform better no matter who is in uniform.
“It has to be five guys on a string,” James said, repeating a statement he has made several times already this season.
Added Reaves: “I think it’s just a guard with five people every possession. Everybody has got to be locked in every single possession, especially on rotations and schemes and stuff like that. We’ve shown we can do it. We just got to do it more regularly.”
Marcus Smart, the former Defensive Player of the Year signed in the offseason to bring a defensive edge to L.A., was even more blunt than Redick in his assessment.
“We doing s—,” Smart said. “We’re being real s—ty right now, and it’s showing. … Every team goes through it trying to figure it out. You just pray that it happens early and we can fix it before it’s too late. But yeah, there’s really no defense, no scheme we can do when we’re giving up offensive rebounds in crucial moments like we are, or guys are getting wherever they want on the court.
“And there’s no help, there’s no resistance, there’s no urgency. So, it’s tough. And JJ is right. There’s really nothing he can do. It’s on us.”
And with the trade deadline just about six weeks away, exactly who comprises “us” in the Lakers’ locker room might change if the roster as currently constructed doesn’t begin to show any signs of defensive improvement.