Austin Reaves put forth one of his better performances of the season against the Atlanta Hawks, but unfortunately it didn’t help the Los Angeles Lakers pick up a win.
Reaves posted a season-high 28 points along with six assists and two steals, but the Lakers fell by 16 points to the Hawks for their second straight loss.
It was more of the same issues that have haunted the Lakers all season long. Slow starts to each half, a lack of energy and intensity, failure to clear the defensive glass and issues defending the 3-point line all reared their heads in the defeat.
As usual, the questions after another disappointing loss turn to what the Lakers can do to fix these issues. Reaves isn’t sure what the answer is because if they knew, they would fix it, but feels the entire organization must come together to figure everything out, as seen on Spectrum SportsNet:
“I don’t think you can just point to one or two things because if was that easy, if you see a problem, you fix a problem. In any situation in life, you address what you don’t like and what can make you better as a person, as a team. But we have to come together as a group, an organization and figure out exactly what it is that we can do better as a collective group to be better. You see on nights where everything is clicking, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful basketball. Swinging it, playing second side. Everybody is involved. And you have nights where it’s not pretty, it’s not good basketball and we have to convert that to the good. Just try to continue to do that every single night… The more good basketball we can play, obviously the better.”
Of particular note has been the Lakers’ defensive issues. Against the Hawks, an 11-point halftime deficit ballooned to 20 in under three minutes and this has been an issue throughout the entire season. Defensive communication has been terrible recently and again Reaves noted that if he had the answer to the issue it wouldn’t be an issue anymore, but he and the Lakers still believe they are better than their record:
“If I had that answer, it’d be fixed. I think individually, we had to sit down and look ourselves in the mirror and kind of just ask what are we bringing to the table and start there. And then after that, like you said, that should have already been done. But we’re better than what our record indicates, I believe. That’s a great question and if I had those answers, I don’t think we’d be 24-25 right now. We’ll continue to try to figure that out, communication is probably the most important thing you can do as a team.”
While Reaves and others on the team may believe the team is better than their record, the facts unfortunately are that the Lakers are a below .500 team that is nowhere near the championship contender they hoped to be. And if they can’t fix these issues, this season will end far earlier than they hoped it would.
Jarred Vanderbilt believes Lakers should be ‘defensive-minded’ to start games
Defense was supposed to be the Lakers’ calling card, but that has not been the case recently. Jarred Vanderbilt believes the team needs to focus on that to start games and let the defense spark the offense.
Vanderbilt recently spoke on his belief that defense should be the primary focus of the Lakers to start games, locking in on that end of the floor. The forward feels that being ‘defensive-minded’ to start games will help ignite the offense by getting them out in transition for more easy baskets.
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