PHOENIX — The Los Angeles Lakers, we’ve known for some time, are prone to nights like this. The nights that skew their point differentials, the nights when they look nowhere close to a team that can contend, the nights when their worst habits shine brightest and their biggest strengths retreat to the background.
It’s why they’ve won 19 total games with just a plus-eight point differential.
As the Lakers pulled their healthy regulars early in the fourth quarter against the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday, everything the Lakers aren’t on the defensive end — aggressive at the point of attack, consistently communicating, constantly covering for one another — had fully eclipsed anything good happening on the other side of the floor.
They had no chance of winning this game, not with this energy, not with this focus, not with this mindset. It didn’t matter that Austin Reaves and Deandre Ayton, who had missed time over the last week, were back. It might not have mattered if Luka Dončić, Rui Hachimura or Gabe Vincent were there.
The Lakers’ 132-108 loss had nothing to do with talent and everything to do with DNA, one team firmly established as a group that plays with physicality and toughness always and another that has to focus its attention and effort on those things.
Last year, Dorian Finney-Smith and Jordan Goodwin played with enough infectious energy to give the Lakers more than enough attitude on a nightly basis. Asked by The Athletic if they have those kinds of players this year, coach JJ Redick issued the obvious response.
“No,” he said.
Redick said the team’s success hinges on a series of choices. While injuries and revolving lineups have slowed continuity on the defensive end, the real challenges stem from mentality. And while players can get healthier, they don’t usually get tougher or more energetic.
“We practice this stuff enough,” Redick said. “We review this stuff enough. We show film on this stuff enough that to me … it 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 gonna make every choice correctly. But can you make the vast majority of ’em correctly? It gives you a chance to win.”
That the Lakers have to choose to play with the right kind of energy is, in itself, an indictment. For other teams — including some they’re chasing in the Western Conference like Oklahoma City and the surging San Antonio Spurs — that energy is the default.
“The theme with our team, again, is like these young teams that move, we just can’t move,” Redick said. “So it’s like we’re stuck in mud.”
Publicly, Lakers players are saying that the team can and will find the right gear defensively so they can work together to get stops. Privately, sources inside the locker room acknowledged that the current roster will have to grind its way through the regular season instead of setting its cruise control at 85 and ignoring the brakes.
“We had a guy the other day who hasn’t played a lot, who didn’t know what a flood was in the middle of a game,” Redick said, referencing a common term for overloading the defense to the strong side of the court. “We clearly have some room to grow in that area.”
Internally, there’s some skepticism that the answers to this problem exist inside the locker room. Last year, Redick and the Lakers’ coaching staff called their hardest-playing role players “banshees.” This year, he’s barely uttered the phrase.
This team, the Lakers believe, has a higher ceiling than last year’s. There’s clearly more talent on the roster. But the ways in which it feels incomplete are so clear on nights like Tuesday, especially when a former Laker, Goodwin, is sparking his new team in ways the Lakers so badly need.
Last year, president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka traded for Finney-Smith. He signed Goodwin to a two-way deal. And the team’s defense improved — even as it lost its anchor Anthony Davis in the Dončić deal.
No one has gone as far as to say the Lakers need to make those same kinds of moves this year. But Redick did say that, for the Lakers to be better more regularly on defense, they’re going to have to approach the game differently.
And it might be easier to change the roster than it is to change a player’s mentality.
“That’s why I said it’s the hard choice. And it’s not the easy choice,” Redick said. “It’s human nature. We all do it. We do it on a daily basis. We make easy choices cause it’s comfortable. Comfortable doesn’t win.”