{"id":640905,"date":"2026-03-05T12:26:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T12:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/640905\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T12:26:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T12:26:18","slug":"lakers-are-the-wrong-kind-of-interesting-amid-fan-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/640905\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers are the wrong kind of interesting amid fan scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Gap year, huh? Who cares! No one is turning down the volume on the Lakers<\/a>. No one is turning down the heat.<\/p>\n

The scrutinizing and psychoanalyzing continues like Luka Doncic<\/a> screaming at the refs \u2014 incessantly, and with impressive stamina. About as loudly too. \u201cOur losses,\u201d Lakers coach JJ Redick<\/a> recently said, \u201care louder than other teams\u2019 because we\u2019re the Lakers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every other team in the NBA gets graded on a curve; bad breaks and reasonable expectations are accounted for in the score at season\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

The Lakers are a pass-fail upper-level course; they either win a championship or they fail.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re 37-24 but still would consider dropping the class if they could \u2014 but they can\u2019t. So they\u2019re forging on, trying to figure it out, their window closing and their fans\u2019 frustration growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s awesome,\u201d guard Austin Reaves<\/a> said of the bright \u2014 no, blinding \u2014 lights trained constantly on the team. <\/p>\n

\"Lakers <\/p>\n

Lakers coach JJ Redick directs his team during a win over the Pelicans at Crypto.com Arena on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

(Allen J. Schaben\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s one of the best \u2014 if not the best organization \u2014 in all of sports. With that comes \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Great responsibility? Golden opportunity?<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 honestly, chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

By which Reaves meant: \u201cIf it\u2019s good, it\u2019s great. And if it\u2019s bad, it\u2019s miserable. They expect to win games, the fans do. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re here to do, we\u2019re here to win and win at a high level. We know that.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why Redick signed up to come coach them, he said. \u201cMy own personal psychosis,\u201d he called it. He swears he wants the smoke.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reality is everybody is going to always have an opinion,\u201d Redick said Tuesday before his team toughed out a 110-101 victory<\/a> against the New Orleans Pelicans, who are healthier than they have been but still are 19-44. \u201cSince pro sports have existed, everybody has always had an opinion. There\u2019s been sports talk, there\u2019s been barber shops, chat rooms. Everybody\u2019s had an opinion. Now, everybody\u2019s opinion is more easily accessible. It\u2019s just more amplified now, but it\u2019s normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then he interrupted a question to return to a previous query about his play calling, needing to rebut the strangers on the internet picking apart his work. \u201cI\u2019m always fascinated by that, by the way,\u201d Redick said. \u201cHow do you know we\u2019re calling plays or not calling plays? \u2026 That\u2019s fascinating. That\u2019s really interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the Lakers. Interesting, even when they aren\u2019t necessarily, basketball-wise. The front office chose to protect future cap space and draft capital rather than substantively improve the team now around Doncic and LeBron James. And the players play like they realize most of them likely are not part of long-term plans.<\/p>\n

And who else but the Lakers to provide some spice during the drab stretch of the season between the trade deadline and the playoffs?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no team with a greater ratio of molehills turned into mountains, so of course it was national news when Redick and Doncic had a disagreement on the bench during Saturday\u2019s win at the Golden State Warriors. It was no big deal, and they laughed about it later, Redick insisted Tuesday. <\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t feel any tension. He was like, \u2018Nah, I didn\u2019t care about it,\u2019\u201d Redick said of Doncic. \u201cYou do it and you move on.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lakers <\/p>\n

Lakers guard Austin Reaves dribbles around Pelicans forward Herbert Jones on Tuesday at Crypto.com Arena.<\/p>\n

(Allen J. Schaben\/Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n

Move on, knowing every interaction and play call and result will be dissected and debated.<\/p>\n

So Doncic can lead the league in scoring (32.4 points per game) and average the third-most assists (8.6) but have his defensive limitations and incessant and unproductive banter with officials get the most attention from some critics.<\/p>\n

And so the Lakers, 1\u00bd games out of third place, are impressing no one. Not when they\u2019re 14-18 against teams that are .500 or better. Not when they\u2019re 1-8 against the league\u2019s top four teams, those losses against the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs, Detroit Pistons and Boston Celtics coming by an average of 20 points.<\/p>\n

A bummer for the Lakers that they\u2019ll have to face good teams in the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Competent teams with heart and want-to, like the Denver Nuggets, who are next on the docket Thursday.<\/p>\n

At 38-24 and a half-game ahead of the Lakers, star center Nikola Jokic\u2019s squad is always formidable \u2014 and looking to avenge a loss to Redick\u2019s team in their first matchup, 115-107 in a game Jokic didn\u2019t play.<\/p>\n

An \u2018A\u2019 game from the Lakers in Denver? Now, that would be worth talking about. That would be pretty interesting \u2014 though we\u2019ll be digging in and discussing it, either way. With the volume cranked all the way up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gap year, huh? Who cares! No one is turning down the volume on the Lakers. No one is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":640906,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3790],"tags":[7,187,83429,142,4034,1698,300,4044,2501,251,150,4033,4043,646,368,6,1999,2294,1222,1065,65,395,2084,396],"class_list":["post-640905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles-lakers","tag-basketball","tag-denver-nuggets","tag-fan-scrutiny","tag-game","tag-la","tag-la-lakers","tag-lakers","tag-lalakers","tag-league","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-losangeles","tag-losangeleslakers","tag-loss","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba","tag-one","tag-opinion","tag-play","tag-playoff","tag-point","tag-redick","tag-season","tag-team"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116176565345832689","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640905","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=640905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}