JJ Redick didn’t hold back his anger on Lakers taking ‘shortcuts’ against Nets

Even with four rotation players out, the Lakers losing to the Nets as they did on Monday is unacceptable.

What was more alarming than the result was how they got there. Austin Reaves had an awful performance, Luka Dončić was either complaining about foul calls or missing 3-pointers and they allowed the Nets to get a whopping 16 offensive rebounds.

Victories are hard to come by in the NBA, and when you give up a game you should win, that’s a tough pill to swallow.

After the loss, coach JJ Redick didn’t hold back his frustration during his postgame comments.

“I think it was just an overall mentality just to take shortcuts tonight,” Redick said. “We just wanted to take shortcuts. They scored 20 points on us gambling. They had 16 offensive rebounds. We ball-watched all night. We said no “dare” shots. I’ll go through it, but they probably made six, seven uncontested threes. Just shortcuts.

“If you want to be a good team, you want to win in the NBA, you got to do the hard stuff. We couldn’t even pass to each other. We couldn’t enter our offense. Running ball screens at literally half court, yeah that’s going to end up in a turnover. I don’t know what we’re doing.”

Redick hit the nail on the head with these comments.

Luka was asking for ball screens way up top a bunch of times. The Nets got so many open 3-pointers in the second quarter, which helped bring them back into the game and in the fourth, the Lakers gave up seven of those offensive rebounds. When you lose by just three points and play so unseriously, it becomes clear why the result didn’t go your way.

If you’re looking for someone to excuse this result because LeBron James, Rui Hachimura, Jasxon Hayes and Dorian Finney-Smith were out, don’t look for Redick to be that person.

“I don’t think being shorthanded is an excuse for how we played basketball tonight,” Redick said. “I think it was a very low-level communication game for our team.”

You can see LA’s lack of communication by the open shots they gave up, the blown coverages and their 17 total turnovers. Well-organized teams in constant communication and giving a full effort don’t do these things.

With just 19 games left and the Lakers fighting for playoff positioning, dropping any game is not okay, much less when it’s against an opponent you are clearly better than.

With how poorly the Lakers performed, context on who was on the court isn’t needed. They didn’t execute the game plan very well and that was within their control.

This was a winnable game, and the Lakers lost it. Now they’ll have to continue their road trip with back-to-back games against the Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets; if they don’t fix these issues, they’ll lose both of these games, regardless of who is in the lineup.