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Phoenix —
Before his first regular season game as the Lakers’ head coach, JJ Redick made a prediction.
“I’d go crazy if I lost,” he said. “I’ll tell you that.”
It took a week for the Lakers to see what it was like.
In his postgame press conference, Redick blamed the Lakers’ 14 points in the second quarter and Kevin Durant’s reluctance to double-team him, two key factors in his team’s 109-105 loss to the Suns on Monday night. explained.
“He’s mad,” Anthony Davis said of the new coach.
After the game, Redick was visibly upset as he talked about the Lakers’ second-quarter offense, which was the worst of his young season.
“There should never be a 14-point quarter,” he said after the game. “So, I’m responsible for that. Part of it is me. We’ve got to make sure we have a good attack. It felt a little random. We stalled. At halftime, we talked about that. We talked about, in order for us to have a high-level offense, we have to move our bodies, we have to move the ball. They have to pick from what we were doing initially. It took us a little bit and we were great in the second half. We had a great performance in the second half.
“The second quarter just really hurt us.”
After speaking to the team after the game, Redick punctuated his speech with a four-letter expletive, but left the players with little doubt about his competitiveness.
“It shows how much he cares,” Austin Reeves said. “His passion is on another level. You can see in every moment of every day that he is passionate about improving our group.”
Redick stood by his other decisions during the game, including two key decisions in the second half.
With 3 seconds left and 40.5 seconds remaining for the Lakers, Redick concocted a play that would force Reaves to hit a 3-pointer — and then with a chance to tie or cut the deficit to one. He said there was no problem with the team.
Reeves, who hit five threes Monday night, missed.
“I thought it looked great. It just didn’t work out,” he said. “I wish I could get them back. I’ve been thinking about it ever since the game ended.”
The other decision was made on the next offensive possession after the Lakers had a chance to tie the game again by stopping their defense. Instead of risking the Lakers’ chance to score the tying three points, Phoenix intentionally fouled LeBron James with 6.4 seconds left. After making the first free throw to cut the lead to two points, James intentionally missed the second and went for the offensive rebound. In the end, Royce O’Neal got the ball and the Suns defended and won.
“There was no timeout. It was a choice we made. I think it was the right choice and we would make that choice again,” Reddick said. “They committed three fouls in that amount of time.” [points]. So even if we foul early on that play, they have great free throw shooters. They’re going to foul us again. So we needed to get that possession to have a chance to tie or win the game. ”
The frustration after the game was mainly due to the Lakers playing very well early in the game in front of a 14-point scorer. The team led 26-8 less than seven minutes into the game, and Davis, who had been named Western Conference Player of the Week earlier in the day, continued to dominate.
Davis led the Lakers with 29 points, 15 rebounds and three blocks.
But after he was benched after scoring 16 points early on, the Suns quickly pushed back into the game thanks to performances from Kevin Durant and Devin Booker. Early in the third set, the lead was completely gone until the Lakers got up to seven points to start the fourth set.
But James and Davis, who struggled to 3-of-14 shooting while battling illness, were unable to repeat the fourth-quarter magic they produced in Saturday’s win over the Kings.
The Lakers only made one field goal and James’ three in the final 3:30.
“Losing is inevitable in this league, but how you play and continue to play week in and week out, game by game, is what defines the type of team you want to be.” James said. “So even if we lost tonight, I think we still did some great things. Of course we did some things we could have done better. They took the game in the second quarter when they scored 14 points. We came back. We started the fourth quarter with a seven-point lead and got us back in the game right away. So we can be better there. But we did a lot of good things tonight.”
And Reddick might have been the best. He decided he was more part of the problem than anyone else in the loss to the Suns.
“This shows what a good leader looks like,” Reeves said.
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