Before his first regular season game as the Lakers head coach, JJ Redick made a prediction.
“It’s going to drive me crazy if we lose,” he said. “I will tell you that.”
It took a week for the Lakers to get to see what that looked like.
Redick, in his postgame news conference, took accountability for the Lakers’ 14-point second quarter and for the hesitation in double-teaming Kevin Durant, two key factors, he said, in his team’s 109-105 loss to the Suns Monday night.
“He’s pissed,” Anthony Davis said of his new coach.
Postgame, Redick was visibly agitated when talking about the Lakers’ offense in the second quarter, their worst of the young season.
“We should never have a 14-point quarter,” he said after. “So that’s on me as well. Part of that is me. I gotta make sure we’re running good offense. I felt like it was a little random. We got stalled out. We talked about it at halftime. For us to be a high-level offense, we gotta move bodies and we gotta move the ball. They gotta screen. They just kinda took us out of what we were doing initially, and we were great in the second half. We executed great in the second half.
“It’s just that second quarter really hurt us.”
After he spoke with his team postgame, Redick punctuated his speech with a four-letter expletive that left little question with his players about his competitiveness.
“Just shows how much he cares,” Austin Reaves said. “His passion is on another level. You can tell every single second of every day that he’s locked into the betterment of our group.”
Redick stood behind his other decisions in the game, including two keys ones late.
With the Lakers down three and 40.5 seconds left, Redick drew up a designed play to get Reaves a three-point shot — saying after that he was fine with his team whether it went for the tie or the chance to cut it to one.
Reaves, who made five threes Monday night, missed.
“Thought it was a great look. It just didn’t go,” he said. “You wish you could have those back. I’ve been thinking about it ever since the game ended.”
The other decision came on the next offensive possession after the Lakers got a defensive stop and another chance to tie. Instead of risking the chance of the Lakers making a tying three, Phoenix intentionally fouled LeBron James with 6.4 seconds left. After making the first free throw to cut the lead to two, James intentionally missed the second to try and create an offensive rebound. Royce O’Neal eventually came down with the ball and the Suns held on to win.
“We had no timeouts. It was a choice that we made. I think that’s the right choice and I’d make that choice again,” Redick said. “With that amount of time, they fouled up three [points]. So even if we fouled earlier on that play, they’ve got great free-throw shooters. They’re gonna foul us again. So we had to get that possession for us to have a chance to tie or win the game.”
The frustration postgame came, largely, because the Lakers played so well early in the game before the 14-point clunker. The team led 26-8 less than seven minutes into the game with Davis, who had been named Western Conference player of the week earlier in the day, continuing to dominate.
Davis finished with 29 points, 15 rebounds and three blocks to lead the Lakers.
But after he went to the bench with 16 early points, Kevin Durant and Devin Booker helped the Suns quickly push back into the game. By early in the third, the lead was totally gone until the Lakers pushed it back up to seven to start the fourth.
But James, who struggled through three-for-14 shooting night while dealing with an illness, and Davis couldn’t recreate the fourth quarter magic they put together Saturday in their win against the Kings.
The Lakers made just one field goal — a James three — in the final 3:30.
“Losses are inevitable in this league. But how you play and how you continue to play each and every week and each and every game is what will define what type of team you want to be,” James said. “So I think, even with the loss tonight, we still did some great things. We did some things we could have been better at, obviously. That 14-point second quarter that got them back in the game. We started the fourth quarter up seven and we let them get right back into the game. So, we can be a lot better there. But we did a lot of good things tonight.”
And the best might’ve been from Redick, who decided that he was as big of a part of the problem as anyone else in the loss to the Suns.
“That just shows what a great leader looks like,” Reaves said.
