The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a crushing 109-80 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday at Target Center. The 80 points scored were the Lakers’ fewest in a game since Jan. 22, 2017 (73 against the Dallas Mavericks) and former NBA player Gilbert Arenas said he would have fired head coach JJ Redick after the game.
“It looked bad… JJ woulda got fired if it was up to me,” Arenas said.
There is no denying that it looked bad, but thinking Redick should have been fired over the nature of the loss is a massive overreaction. At the end of the day, it is just one regular season game.
Redick has led the Lakers to a 12-9 record after 21 games this season, the same as Darvin Ham last season, and while that’s not great, it isn’t terrible either. They have had some impressive victories and some terrible losses thus far but what is a bit concerning is that the latter of those have come fairly regularly off late.
The Lakers have lost five of their last seven games and have been blown out in three of them. To go with this loss to the Timberwolves, they lost 127-102 to the Denver Nuggets on Nov. 23 and 127-100 to the Phoenix Suns on Nov. 26.
Redick might start coming under some pressure if the Lakers suffer more lopsided defeats like these in the coming weeks. I don’t think he’ll be fired anytime soon, though. The 40-year-old is a first-time head coach and some growing pains were expected. The Lakers gave Redick a four-year deal and unless things go horribly wrong, he should remain in the role for a couple of years at least.
Gilbert Arenas’ Theory On Why Anthony Davis Doesn’t Take Over Games In The Fourth Quarter
One of the issues for the Lakers that Redick had seemingly addressed was Anthony Davis not being aggressive in the fourth quarters of games. The big man was dominating in those big moments earlier in the season, but that hasn’t been the case recently. Davis has been a bit too passive at times and Arenas has a theory for why he isn’t taking over games in the fourth.
“Maybe he don’t want to be responsible for losing games,” Arenas said. “Maybe he can’t take the pressure of dropping this game. Like, I’d rather let the 40-year-old do it because I don’t want the responsibility – if we lose, Laker Nation’s gonna be on me.”
That’s an interesting theory but I am not sure that’s the reason Davis gets this passive. He gets the blame for the team losing if he isn’t aggressive, so it’s not like he escapes criticism in that scenario.
Whatever the reason may be, Redick needs to figure out a way to ensure Davis remains aggressive in the final period, or else the losses might start piling up. The Lakers will especially need him to be at his best in their next game, as they take on Bam Adebayo and the Miami Heat at Kaseya Center on Wednesday at 7:30 PM ET.
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