The playoff dynamics surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers have taken a beating over a five-day span that featured a pair of striking losses to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
The first game, a 139–96 smackdown on April 3 at Oklahoma City to the reigning NBA champions, cost the Lakers their MVP candidate and leading scorer, Luka Doncic, to a hamstring injury. The next day, Austin Reaves was ruled out for an extended period with soft-tissue damage to his oblique.
Neither star guard will be on the court in the final few games of the regular season at minimum, and Reaves could be out of action for more than a month.
That means the playoff reality for a team that had fought its way into third place in a stacked Western Conference by going 13-1 before that Oklahoma City loss is headed for a slide down the seedings pole that might leave L.A. hanging on for the fifth seed.
The latest game against the Thunder was a 123–87 thumping at home on Tuesday night.
James was out of the lineup, as were athletic center Jaxson Hayes and veteran guard Marcus Smart. That forced the Lakers to turn to shooting guard Luke Kennard, swingman Jake LaRavia, and forward Drew Timme to challenge the Thunder.
It wasn’t a fair fight. Even so, coach JJ Redick yanked forward Rui Hachimura for missing a defensive assignment and had an obvious verbal disagreement with forward Jarred Vanderbilt during a timeout that required explanation after the game.
This is certainly not the time to have dissension between coach and players, and Redick did his best to downplay the moment with Vanderbilt.
“Just a confluence of things,” Redick said. “Nothing personal with him. Just normal stuff from my end. I think for all of us, being undermanned and we’ve got to scrap and claw, we’ve got all to be on the same page, be great teammates.
“I called a timeout to get him out of the game, and he reacted. But again, normal interaction for me.”
Redick said about Hachimura: “This is the way things started tonight. I just called the early timeout because Rui didn’t do his job. And so I took him out of the game.
“We’ve got to find nine guys who are all in on us fighting … whatever you’ve got to do to go out and fight, and be all in on the team. We’ll find the nine guys. It’s a great opportunity over the next three games to find those nine guys.”
This no longer sounds like a team that might’ve had the chance to knock off a squad or two for a playoff run.
This appears to be more like a team mired in the prickly thickets of a midseason rough patch, not knowing how to escape as danger approaches.
And the teams in the West are all dangerous.
The Lakers are in the fourth seed right now and would host the Houston Rockets in a first-round matchup. But they could fall as low as the fifth spot, giving the Rockets the home-court advantage in the same matchup.
When asked how he has maintained his mental balance through the recent winning surge and now the turbulent times, Redick was direct and forceful in his response.
“Task. Be just focused on the task,” he said. “So my preparation doesn’t change. My messaging changes throughout the season, but it’s trying get the team to the right point to go and compete and play a basketball game, make the adjustments we need to make and find the guys that are able to do it that night.”
Timme, a seldom-used forward who has limited experience in the NBA, talked about the bar the Lakers have set as a team to live up to their huge expectations.
“Essentially, we’ve got to battle,” he said in his postgame press conference. “You know, no matter who we have or don’t have, we have to play hard. We have to compete. I mean, we’re the Lakers. There’s a standard.”
It sounds a lot like a coach and a team that are still searching for the recipe to success.
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