EL SEGUNDO — In the aftermath of the Lakers’ Christmas Day loss to the Houston Rockets, which marked a season-worst three-game losing streak, Coach JJ Redick was looking for the team to improve in three areas: defensive clarity, role clarity and offensive organization.
And when it comes to the final area, Redick made it clear after Saturday afternoon’s practice that there remains plenty of room for improvement after going 2-1 in their three games since the defeat to the Rockets.
“No, not at all,” Redick responded when asked if he’s felt his team has been more organized offensively over the last week. “Not at all. And I don’t know what else to do. I do a lot of joysticking over there on the sideline.”
Redick added that during Friday night’s home win against the Memphis Grizzlies, he called for a play – “Away Toss” – but the set wasn’t run as designed with the players for whom it was intended.
“We bring it up the left side, I want so-and-so in it,” said Redick, whose squad will host the Grizzlies again Sunday night at Crypto.com Arena. “This was after a deadball; it wasn’t like I was calling it on the fly. And we bring it up that side and the person I want in the Away Toss isn’t over there.
“That’s happening so consistently right now. I chalk it up to the holidays.”
Redick also brought up that the Lakers ran 12 plays after timeouts (ATOs) against the Grizzlies, but ran eight of them incorrectly.
“We tried to run two of them again, but still didn’t run them correctly,” he added. “One, we tried to run a third time, didn’t run correctly. So, just a lot of slippage with execution. We should be able to transfer 30 seconds of time delay from the clipboard to [the court]. So, that was kind of frustrating.”
The mistakes were perplexing to Redick, who said he didn’t struggle with remembering plays during his 15-season playing career in the NBA.
The players took accountability for the miscues.
“We talked about that in the film room, about ATOs and just kind of like, the execution that we have on them,” forward Jake LaRavia said. “[Friday’s] game was pretty bad. You get like, he said, 12 or 15, whatever it was, ATOs a game and you have to execute those. Everyone’s locked in on the whiteboard in a timeout, and it’s on the players to go out to the court and then execute it.
“And sometimes you kind of just get scrambled, or the other team gets the offensive play first, and you’re on defense, so you’re not really thinking about the play. And then we get to that point and kind of everything is scrambled. So it’s on the players to just get everyone organized and understanding what we’re doing, but it’s also just individually a thing where you just have to know where your spot is and then execute the ATO.”
GRIZZLIES AT LAKERS
When: Sunday, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV/Radio: Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM