Redick praises LeBron, rips on others’ lack of effort in Lakers’ loss

MEMPHIS — After the Memphis Grizzlies’ 131-114 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday, Desmond Bane crashed Scotty Pippen Jr.’s interview on the court to praise him for stealing the ball from LeBron James as Pippen closed out the game. at some point after Ja Morant left with a right hamstring injury.

“See how he grabbed that ball from the old man over there?” Bane said as he grabbed Pippen by the shoulders.

Over in the losing locker room, Lakers coach JJ Redick used the “old man” as an example of how the rest of the guard should play.

“I thought LeBron was great tonight,” Redick said after James scored a season-high 39 points on 15-for-24 shooting, with LA missing two starters in Anthony Davis (left heel contusion) and Rui Hachimura ( disease). “The biggest thing that stood out… He played hard. Almost 40 years old and played the hardest on our team. That says a lot about him.”

And that spoke volumes for the rest of LA’s team, which ended its five-game road trip with another loss to go 1-4 overall and fall to 4-4 on the season.

During Redick’s postgame remarks, the first-year coach was asked how he would address the perceived lack of effort with his team.

“I just did,” Redick said, slamming the microphone on the table in front of him to end the press conference.

As Redick exited the room, he yelled back at reporters, “The first thing I said to them.”

Redick began to deliver the message by the way he distributed playing time.

He dished out just six second-half minutes to D’Angelo Russell — and a season-low 22 minutes overall — as Redick shuffled his rotation to try to find a spark.

“Just level of competition, attention to detail, some of the things we’ve talked to him about for a couple of weeks,” Redick said when asked why he limited Russell’s role in Memphis. “And at times he’s been really good at those things. And other times it’s just going back to certain habits. But it wasn’t like a punishment. It just felt like for us to have a chance to win this game, ​​that was the route we wanted to take.”

Russell finished with 12 points on 4-for-12 shooting (2-for-9 from 3), but he was hardly the only LA player to struggle against the Grizzlies. Dalton Knecht, making his first career start in place of Hachimura, shot 1-for-7, with all of his shots coming from beyond the 3-point arc. Austin Reaves scored 19 but was just 2-for-9 from 3. Gabe Vincent, who benefited from Russell’s minutes, was 2-for-8 overall (1-for-6 from 3).

James, who became just the sixth player in league history to reach 1,500 career games Wednesday, was asked about Redick’s claim of effort.

“At the end of the day, especially when you lose body, you have to compete,” said James, who was matched up defensively with Memphis’ 6-foot-10 power forward Jaren Jackson Jr. most of the night. “You’ve got to compete even harder. You’ve got to be out there and give it everything you’ve got and on both ends. I think there were times when we did that, but most of the time, I don’t think we kept energy and effort.”

It was the second loss of the trip as LA allowed 130-plus points to its opponents as the Lakers have dropped to 28th in defensive efficiency in the NBA, allowing 118.8 points per possession. 100 possessions.

“We got to compete and we had to defend. We gave up 50% shooting and they shot the 3-ball well. They got into the paint. They got offensive rebounds. They got second-chance points. And they had some transition points as well ,” James said. “So, it wasn’t too much of the offense, even though we didn’t shoot the ball well. We’ve got to do a better job with that, but the defense, we’ve got to hang our hats on that, too.”