The Los Angeles Lakers have plenty of offensive weapons. When a shootout is what a basketball game turns into, JJ Redick's team is always going to have a chance. Trading buckets with a competitor can always be a risky proposition, though. The Lakers saw that on Tuesday night.
In Los Angeles' matchup against the Portland Trail Blazers, they came up just short on exchanging firepower and dropped a tight 136-129 battle for their first loss of the season. The Blazers outscored the Lakers 34-26 in the final quarter. That little bit of extra juice brought it home for Portland.
Redick said after the game: "We have to be able to rely on our defense every night, and if we score 129 points at home, we should be able to get enough stops to win."
Unfortunately for the Lakers coach, that was not the case against the Blazers. Redick called Portland a 'really good basketball team' and those are the types of squads that can give you trouble if you are only playing one side of the court. Los Angeles needs to find balance moving forward.
Lakers cannot rely on just their offense to win basketball games
It took a few days of Lakers training camp before Redick started shifting gears to the offensive end. The third-year coach had a good understanding of what his team needed more work on. A group featuring Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves fueling the offense was never going to face an uphill battle to be elite.
That is what Redick's team has been on that end through four games. Their lowest scoring night of the season thus far has been a 125-point outing against the Los Angeles Clippers. The Lakers (126.7) just barely trail the Blazers team (126.8) they just lost to for the best offensive rating in the league during the early goings.
Doncic has back-to-back outings of 40-plus, Reaves has been unbelievably efficient, plus the role players around them are performing. It all illustrates the point of why Redick's players talked at Lakers Media Day about him constantly hammering home how important defense was.
That is what unlocks the full potential of this team.
Go through the recent NBA champions and you will find a list of squads who could effectively play both ends, or at least turned it up on the defensive end when it mattered most in the postseason. Redick wants the Lakers to grow into a title contender. That means laying the foundation on both sides of the court.
It is safe to say the offense is championship-ready. Redick needs his players to remember their defensive fundamentals from camp to not be wasting 129-point scoring nights.
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