The Los Angeles Lakers saw their two-game winning streak snapped by a 123-116 loss to the Golden State Warriors at Chase Center on Thursday. It was a back-and-forth affair early on, but the Warriors managed to create some separation in the second quarter, and Lakers head coach JJ Redick explained what went wrong postgame.
Reporter: “It seemed like a pretty good first 5-6 minutes in terms of shot quality. What did you see from kind of midway through the first through the rest of the half defensively, and what your team was doing against it?”
JJ Redick: “I thought our first shot defense was great throughout the first half. They had seven offensive rebounds for 12 points in the second quarter. We couldn’t score for six and a half minutes, and I think not surprised that they switched everything. We expected that. We scored 69 points in the second half against the same defense.
“I think we just got a little stagnant and didn’t want to move. You got to move, you got to play with force, you got to get to the next thing… Sometimes the expenditure of energy on one end and you don’t have it for the other end. I thought our guys were playing hard on defense in the first half, and then just the second opportunities that continued during our comeback.
“There were number of possessions where, got a stop, but they ended up getting an offensive rebound and end up scoring on it. Or there’s a loose ball, they get the loose ball… The big momentum-changing sort of stretch, we just couldn’t muster, and a lot of that had to do with just the second opportunities.”
Reporter: “JJ, in the first half, when you guys weren’t scoring, it seemed like a lot of that was missed three, but it was like your shot profile seemed to change. I want to say like eight or nine-foot twos, stuff like that. What were they doing on that? Was that anything-“
Redick: “It was not what they were going. It was what we were doing, and we showed them at halftime. The spacing alignments and having the wrong guy in the dunker spot, the wrong guy in the corner.
“The structure of what we’re trying to do against Reds and what every team tries to do against Reds is create the proper spacing and create the proper next guy and create the proper guys in the corners, and we just didn’t have that, and you end up with turnovers.”
The Lakers’ offense struggled mightily against the Warriors’ switching for stretches in the first half. They took a 22-20 lead with 3:43 left in the first quarter but did not score another point the rest of the way.
The Lakers were only able to end their scoring drought when Austin Reaves went to the line with 9:31 left in the second quarter. A three-pointer from LeBron James not long after made it a one-point game, but the hosts lost their way after that.
The Warriors went on a 25-10 run to pull away from the Lakers and then managed to keep them at arm’s length the rest of the way. Whenever the Lakers did threaten to pull off a comeback, the Warriors got some timely offensive rebounds. They ended up with 23 second-chance points, and the outcome of this game might have been different had the Lakers managed to secure some more rebounds.
With this loss, the Lakers dropped to 46-30 on the season and are now fourth in the West. They’ll look to bounce back when they take on the New Orleans Pelicans at Crypto.com Arena on Friday at 10:30 PM ET.
