LeBron James Diagnoses Lakers’ Defense & Effort Issues

For the second time in the month of December, the Los Angeles Lakers were blown out by the Phoenix Suns. Despite another solid performance from LeBron James, and the return of Austin Reaves, the Lakers’ defense was nowhere to be found as the Suns did whatever they wanted in the 24-point blowout.

The Lakers allowed the Suns to shoot 59% from the field and 41% from 3-point range. Additionally, the Lakers turned the ball over 17 times and gave up 12 offensive rebounds, giving the Suns even more opportunities for easy buckets. And it is those issues which James believes is hurting the Lakers defensively more than anything else, via Spectrum SportsNet:

“It’s the same thing I’ve said before, it has to be five guys on a string. And these guys also made a lot of midrange, contested twos too and those are part of our keys that we’re willing to give up. It’s the fastbreak points, it’s the second-chance points, it’s the open threes that we do not wanna give up. This is a good midrange shooting team. Book hit some, the kid [Jamaree] Bouyea off the bench hit some, Dillon Brooks hit some. They played exceptionally well so you give them kudos to that.”

It has seemed to be a theme this season that the Lakers have struggled with the younger, more athletic teams who play fast such as the Suns, San Antonio Spurs and Atlanta Hawks. LeBron spoke to this, noting that there have been times they have matched their opponents energy, but not consistently:

“Every team is constructed differently, I would say. Personnel kind of dictates how you can play, how you would like to play, how you would like to execute. I think we’ve had some good times and we’ve had some bad times throughout the season where we’ve matched the energy of a lot of teams that played like this and sometimes we haven’t and it’s resulted in either a win or loss. Quite frankly, sometimes you also play extremely hard like that and still don’t get it done. The other night vs. the Clippers, not saying they play the same way as the Suns, but we went out and played as hard as we could and we still just came up short. Just trying to take the bad, you look at some of the good from each and every game and see how you can get better from it.”

It is no secret that the Lakers are not a team with a ton of athletes. The top two scorers in Luka Doncic and Reaves are more skilled and crafty and James can only reach that athletic level in spurts at this stage of his career. Some of the role players such as Rui Hachimura, Jake LaRavia and Marcus Smart aren’t jumping out of the building either.

It doesn’t mean the Lakers can’t be successful, but the margin for error is much more slim, especially if they aren’t playing as hard as they can against these teams. In the end, this team has some obvious holes and they must figure out how to fix them soon.

Marcus Smart: Lakers must fix defensive issues before it’s too late

Lakers guard Marcus Smart, a former Defensive Player of the Year, pulled no punches when discussing the Lakers’ defense, putting the onus on the players themselves and saying they must figure something out before it’s too late.