Los Angeles Lakers: 5 things they can learn from their inexcusable losses

3. Defense wins games

During the first half of the season, the Lakers were one of the better defensive teams in the league. They were third in defensive efficiency in November, ninth in December and sixth in January.

Since then, however, their defense has been putrid. At this point, Magic Johnson’s statue outside of Staples Center could score a basket against the team’s entire starting unit by himself.

This goes back to maintaining and ingraining the right habits and disciplines. Coach Luke Walton deserves credit for building a culture over the last couple of years that’s been centered around defense and up-tempo basketball. But, since the compound effect of the injuries took hold, they’ve gotten away from it.

Offense and defense may be of equal importance, but as any basketball coach will tell you, the defense must be a constant. If it is, you can always call on it to win a key game, to overcome a deficit or to pull out a close, down-to-the-wire game.

In their last 15 games leading up to Monday’s game, the Lakers have been 25th in defensive efficiency. Not surprisingly, they lost 10 of those games.

The players on this team know how to play strong defense for 48 minutes because they were doing it consistently for the first few months of the season. It got them wins against the Warriors, Blazers (twice), Nuggets, Celtics, Rockets and Thunder (without LeBron).