DENVER — With a short-handed version of his team coming off a blowout road loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday night, the third defeat of an eventual winless four-game road trip, Lakers coach JJ Redick entered the visitor team’s locker room at Fiserv Forum looking to provide perspective.
“When he walked in, he was like, ‘Everything was good a week ago,’” Lakers guard Austin Reaves said. “We was playing good basketball, we had won eight straight. And we’ve had some bad luck with injuries and stuff. People that are even playing still banged up a little bit.
“But like I said, nobody feels sorry for us. So we gotta figure out a way to not let that happen and go compete in games. There’s no easy way around it. You just gotta figure it out. We don’t really have room for error.”
Redick clarified that he was making his second reference of the season to “A Week Ago” by Jay-Z
“I’m a little upset at Austin – I thought I would get a little more street cred,” Redick quipped ahead of Friday’s trip-finale loss to the Denver Nuggets. “I said to somebody [Thursday] night, I know you guys see sometimes in game and it goes viral, me yelling at Dalton [Knecht] because he doesn’t know his own play. But one of my strengths is the ability to properly react to things. And I’m not perfect with that, but I’m pretty good at it … being able to see the bigger picture and being able to contextualize things.”
The context of the Lakers’ four-game losing streak, which is their longest drought of the season, is that they were without their starting frontcourt for nearly the entire trip.
Rui Hachimura (left patellar tendinopathy) and center Jaxson Hayes (bruised right knee) missed the entire trip, with Hachimura being sidelined for the past eight games.
LeBron James suffered a strained left groin late in the trip-opening loss to the Boston Celtics on March 8, sitting out the last three games.
Luka Doncic (sprained right ankle/left calf injury management), Gabe Vincent (left knee injury management) and Dorian Finney-Smith (left ankle injury management) also didn’t play in Friday’s game in which the depleted Lakers nearly stunned the Nuggets.
The Lakers’ injured players (James, Hachimura, Hayes and Maxi Kleber) flew back to Southern California between Monday’s loss to the Brooklyn Nets and the loss to the Bucks.
Redick expects the Lakers to get players back during their compact homestand with five games in seven days.
The Lakers will play a pair of back-to-back sets with matchups against the Phoenix Suns (Sunday afternoon) and San Antonio Spurs (Monday night), rematches against the Nuggets (Wednesday night) and Bucks (Thursday night) before playing the Chicago Bulls on Saturday evening.
“I would assume at some point in the next three days to a week,” Redick said, “if not a little bit longer than that for one guy, I think they’re all very close to returning.”
But the bigger picture – and the goal of making the playoffs – is still being kept at the forefront.
The Lakers (40-25) dropped from the No. 2 spot in the Western Conference standings to No. 5 after their winless trip.
They entered the weekend two games behind the No. 2 Nuggets, and a game behind the No. 3 Houston Rockets and No. 4 Memphis Grizzlies.
The Lakers still had a 2½- game cushion over the Golden State Warriors for No. 6 and Minnesota Timberwolves for No. 7, but those teams have closed the gap over the past week with their winning streaks and the Lakers’ losing streak.
“We gotta figure out a way to get in the playoffs and that’s my focus,” Redick said. “We realize we need to get more wins to be in the playoffs.”
SUNS AT LAKERS
When: 12:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV/radio: KABC (Ch. 7)/710 AM
