ORLANDO, Fla. — As Lakers coach JJ Redick sees it, his team’s recent woeful defensive performances are because of the bad habits the group developed on that end of the floor over the previous couple of weeks while a few of their main players were injured.
But those bad habits are still lingering even with LeBron James, Rui Hachimura and Jaxson Hayes all back in the fold.
This was evident in the Lakers’ back-to-back losses to the Chicago Bulls at home on Saturday and Orlando Magic to kick off the four-game trip Monday as part of their three-game losing streak.
“We’re going through it a little bit,” Redick said after the loss to the Magic. “We gotta get back into the flow and the rhythm and those guys, it’s not just them getting back into their flow, but it’s the group and how the group functions.”
The group hasn’t been functioning anywhere close to the level they were on the defensive end of the floor recently, compared to nearly half of the season before the injuries started to impact availability.
The Lakers, who’ve lost seven of their past 10 games, have a defensive rating (points allowed per 100 possessions) of 119.3 going back to the March 8 road loss to the Boston Celtics, which was the first of four consecutive absences for Hayes and the game in which James injured his groin, which led to him sitting for two weeks.
This includes two of their worst defensive performances of the season with their losses to the Bulls – in which they allowed a season-worst 146 points – and the Magic.
The Lakers haven’t played with the same energy, focus and tenacity defensively compared to how they were earlier in the season.
They aren’t as physical. The resistance on opponents’ drives has dipped. So has the resistance at the rim.
The attention to the details has slipped.
“We gotta hold each other accountable and do it,” forward Dorian Finney-Smith said. “We’re asking to help each other, sit in gaps and that requires a lot of effort and energy. We gotta put [a] 48-minute game together.”
The Lakers’ defensive slippage comes after they had the league’s best defensive rating (107.6) during a 24-game stretch from Jan. 15 to March 6, and the second-best defensive rating (109.4) during a 38-game stretch from Dec. 8 to March 6.
“Like JJ said, we told on ourselves,” Luka Doncic said. “We know we can do it. And we just got to look back and maybe watch the film from those games, how we played. We were physical, we were flying around.”
The Lakers’ recent slide hasn’t hurt them too badly in the standings since most of the Western Conference teams around them have also struggled lately.
They entered Wednesday’s road game against the Indiana Pacers at No. 4 spot in the West standings with a 43-28 record. The Lakers were just one game behind the Denver Nuggets for No. 3.
“We just gotta look back at the way we play on that eight-game winning streak,” Doncic said. “We [were] physical. We [have a] hell of a defense. We just got a little bit satisfied. We can’t afford that right now.”
LAKERS AT PACERS
When: 4:30 p.m. PT Wednesday
Where: Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Indianapolis
TV/radio: ESPN, Spectrum SportsNet/710 AM
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