{"id":621791,"date":"2026-02-24T11:54:37","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/621791\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T11:54:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T11:54:37","slug":"lakers-lack-of-physicality-highlighted-in-loss-to-celtics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/621791\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers\u2019 lack of physicality highlighted in loss to Celtics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Lakers\u2019 struggles against more physical opponents hasn\u2019t been a talking point in a while, but Sunday\u2019s blowout loss<\/a> to their longtime cross-country rival, the Boston Celtics<\/a>, brought it back to the forefront.<\/p>\n

Yes, the offense and the process behind it on Sunday afternoon was abysmal, especially in the first half. This led to the Lakers scoring their second-fewest points in a game this season (89) to the Celtics at Crypto.com Arena.<\/p>\n

\"LeBronLeBron James drives to the basket against the Boston Celtics. AP<\/p>\n

Part of the Lakers\u2019 struggles were because they settled for what the Celtics wanted them to take: midrange shots against the deep drop defensive coverage Boston used with multiple big men when defending on-ball screens.<\/p>\n

Just over 40% (40.7%) of the Lakers\u2019 shot attempts against the Celtics came from midrange (outside of four feet from the rim to the 3-point line), which was tied for their seventh-highest mark of the season. Coach JJ Redick<\/a> highlighted how the Celtics\u2019 drop coverage put the Lakers in uncomfortable positions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were opportunities to put more pressure on the rim,\u201d Redick said. \u201cParticularly in the first half. A lot of times when teams are on a deeper drop versus all our guys that play pick and roll, it kind of puts you a little bit in a bind of not having the obvious choice to pass, if that makes sense? So we just got to do a better job of just finding guys and moving the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Celtics also presented similar issues that the Lakers have struggled to consistently have an answer for: a physical team that establishes a hard-nose style of play early on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Once the Lakers didn\u2019t match physicality with physicality, frustration began to build.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And the Lakers took out their frustrations toward the officials \u2013 albeit after multiple egregious non-calls that favored the Celtics.<\/p>\n

There was the technical foul Marcus Smart picked up after Jaylen Brown<\/a> elbowed him in the face, with Smart being assessed the technical for arguing about the play. Reaves was also T\u2019d up for arguing about the play.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Redick was given a technical later in the game while arguing Neemias Queta should\u2019ve been called for goaltending or basket inference on a LeBron James<\/a> layup attempt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"LeBronLeBron James gets to the basket against the Celtics. NBAE via Getty Images<\/p>\n

And once those frustrations were built up, the Lakers struggled to stay in the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can get that way sometimes,\u201d Reaves said. \u201cWhen you don\u2019t get those calls, you can\u2019t stay frustrated. You got to move on to the next play. I\u2019m a culprit of that. I got to do better in that situation, and our whole team does as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the frustrations also affected the Lakers\u2019 offensive playstyle.<\/p>\n

Too often they resorted to one-on-one basketball or going to high pick and rolls without off-ball actions or movements once the Celtics took control of the game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cGot to be able to understand games that are going to be tailored to play different ways,\u201d Reaves said. \u201c[With the] scoring ability [of] Luka [Doncic] and Bron, there\u2019s going to be nights where you take matchups and you score and you win that way, and it\u2019s going to be nights like [Sunday]. Got to do a better job all of us, myself included, playing with the pass. When you do that, everything\u2019s going to open up more for one-on-one basketball. That\u2019s what you want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Celtics presented a similar challenge the Lakers will experience in the postseason.<\/p>\n

Sunday showed they have more progress to make before passing the test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers\u2019 struggles against more physical opponents hasn\u2019t been a talking point in a while, but Sunday\u2019s blowout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3766],"tags":[7,45,75,3798,160,46,1331,185,150,368,6,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-621791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-celtics","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-boston","10":"tag-boston-celtics","11":"tag-bostonceltics","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-celtics","14":"tag-j-j-redick","15":"tag-lebron-james","16":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","17":"tag-luka-doncic","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116125478143194981","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}