To see the Los Angeles Lakers’ offense digress the way it did duringSunday’s loss to the Celtics— despite their prolific individual offensive talent — shouldn’t have been a surprise.
The Celtics poked at one of the Lakers’ tactical weaknesses that’s been evident for the last few months.
AndLakers coach JJ Redicktook ownership of his team underperforming in those situations.
The Celtics had multiple big men play in deep drop coverage against the Lakers’ pick and rolls, which stifled their offense just two days after it had one of its better performances of the season inFriday’s home win over the Clippers.
“When teams play the deep drop, we have our counters and we just got to [execute],” Redick said. “Sometimes when the ball’s just changing ends quick, it’s easy to just get into drag after drag after drag. So, I took ownership of that. We have our counters for deep drop. We got to do a better job of that.”
The Lakers did poorly against the Celtics.
Too often, their offense would bog.
Get stuck in a pattern of running set plays. Or not using the power of the pass to shift the defense, instead trying to rely on the individualoffensive strengths of Luka Dončić, LeBron James or Austin Reaves to create advantages against a Celtics team that wasn’t allowing many.
The Lakers became predictable. And their struggles were, too.
The issues they faced were similar to the ones they had in their Dec. 1 home loss to the Suns, when they struggled offensively against a Phoenix team that had Mark Williams in a deep drop.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
