PHOENIX — The desert would not forgive forgetfulness. It reveals character by stripping away all the things else. Tuesday evening, beneath the cruel white lights of Mortgage Matchup Center, the Lakers stood uncovered, their defensive rules dissolving like mirages, their identity evaporating into the dry air.
The Lakers misplaced 132-108 to the Phoenix Suns.
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They misplaced consecutive video games for the primary time in 28 outings. But previous that, they misplaced one thing more durable to quantify — that certainty of self, that information of who they’re when the ball stops shifting and the threes begin falling, and the scoreboard turns into a blaring confession.
Who are these Lakers?
The third quarter supplied damning testimony.
Phoenix scored 45 factors on 72.7% capturing, a barrage of mid-range daggers and uncontested drives that turned a 10-point halftime deficit into a 26-point insurmountable gap.
The Suns touched the paint on each possession, posting a 1.43 offensive ranking in that territory. They turned 17 Laker turnovers into 24 factors. They scored 62 factors in the paint, changing 21 of 27 two-pointers.
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The Lakers managed 5 fast-break factors. Five.
The numbers during the last 10 video games compose a requiem: 5-5 file, twenty eighth in defensive ranking (122.0), dead-last in surrendering 16 three-pointers per recreation, thirtieth in opponent three-point proportion (43%). They’re twenty second in their very own three-point capturing (34%).
These aren’t anomalies. These are autopsies.
“The offense was clicking, our defense wasn’t,” LeBron James stated, his 23 factors offering little consolation. “That’s literally what it was.”
Literally. As in, actually a catastrophe. As in, actually the third time in 13 days the Lakers surrendered 130-plus, as in, actually essentially the most factors they’ve allowed by means of three quarters all season.
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The rotation roulette hasn’t helped. Austin Reaves returned from a three-game calf absence to attain 17 factors off the bench, capturing 6 of 11. He seemed winded, then he seemed proper. He seemed like a person discovering his rhythm in a track whose beat retains altering.
“Definitely felt weird coming off the bench,” Reaves stated. “But you know, it’s basketball at the end of the day.”
But is it? Basketball implies construction, cohesion and 5 gamers shifting as one.
The Lakers resembled 5 strangers sharing an elevator, every ready for a distinct ground. They’ve began 17 totally different lineups in 28 video games. They’ve had their full rotation of Luka Dončić, Reaves and James wholesome thrice this yr. Three.
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JJ Redick’s preseason predictions about lineup stability now ring like a shorted doorbell on the fritz; his defensive schemes are crumbling like oily parchment paper.
Zone protection? Opponents get at-will layups and open threes.
Switch all the things? Hasn’t labored.
Drop protection? Constantly exploited.
“There’s shortcuts you can take, or you can do the hard thing,” Redick stated. “It’s just a choice… Comfortable doesn’t win.”
The selection, repeatedly, has been consolation. The Lakers have surrendered open threes. They’ve surrendered second-chance factors.
Against Phoenix, they surrendered, most damningly, the center of the ground — a no man’s land the place Dillon Brooks, a participant on his sixth workforce in six years, remodeled into a destroyer.
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Brooks scored 25 factors in 24 minutes, 10 of 15 from the sphere, 3 of 6 from deep, a journeyman’s revenge narrative written in Laker blood.
“They play really hard,” Marcus Smart stated. “They just leave it all out there and uh no matter what happens, you know they keep going.”
The Lakers didn’t maintain going. They stopped. They stalled. They surrendered the primary 13 possessions of the second half, a feat so grotesque it defies basketball logic.
“We’re being real shitty right now, and it’s showing,” Smart stated.
His profanity-laced assertion tells the reality.
The Laker protection lacks foot velocity. It lacks urgency. It lacks, most crucially, the “five guys on a string” connectivity LeBron referenced — that telepathic concord the place one rotation triggers the following, the place assist arrives earlier than it is wanted, the place the entire turns into better than the sum of its components.
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Instead, they’ve gamers who do not know what a “flood” is in the center of video games. They have assist defenders who assist the helper too late. They made Suns’ heart Mark Williams, who scored 18 factors and 9 rebounds, appear to be an All-Star in opposition to a protection that handled him like an afterthought.
“Personnel kind of dictates how you can play, how you would like to play,” James stated.
But this assertion trails into the area between excuse and clarification.
The Lakers’ personnel suggests they need to defend. They’ve proven they’ll.
They have been second in the West weeks in the past. They held groups underneath 110. They rotated with function. They selected the arduous factor.
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Now they’re selecting to be one thing else.
Over the final ten, they selected to give up 43 p.c to opponents from the three. They selected to permit opponents to shoot 16 triples per recreation.
They selected to permit Phoenix’s Devin Booker dissect them for 21 factors and 11 assists whereas Collin Gillespie added 16 factors off the bench.
The query is not whether or not they can flip a change. It’s whether or not they keep in mind the place the change is, whether or not they can acknowledge their very own reflection in the stat sheet’s mirror, whether or not the purple and gold nonetheless imply what they meant when the season started.
Who are these Lakers? They are a workforce that wins when their offense scores 145. They are a workforce that loses when it would not.
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They are a workforce highlighted by Dončić’s bruised calf and a bruised workforce ego and sense of self.
They are a workforce that has practiced these rotations, reviewed this movie and proven these clips. They are a workforce that is aware of higher.
They are a workforce making selections.
“Comfortable doesn’t win,” Redick stated.
These phrases grasp in the air like a verdict.
The Lakers have been snug. The Lakers have been complacent.
The Lakers have been, for 10 video games and counting, a workforce that defends solely when handy, that tries solely when simple, that wins solely when the photographs fall.
Who are these Lakers? The desert revealed them. The stats outlined them. The quotes damned them.
They are a workforce trying to find a protection, trying to find an identity, trying to find one thing actual in a season that more and more seems like a mirage.