MEMPHIS — After the Grizzlies’ 131-114 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Wednesday, Memphis’ Desmond Bane crashed teammate Scotty Pippen Jr.’s on-court interview to praise him for stealing the ball from LeBron James, as Pippen closed the game out at point after Ja Morant exited with a right hamstring injury.
“See the way he snatched that ball from that old man over there?” Bane said while grabbing Pippen by the shoulders.
Over in losing locker room, Lakers coach JJ Redick used that “old man” as an example of how the rest of L.A.’s roster should play.
“I think LeBron was fantastic tonight,” Redick said after James scored a season-high 39 points on 15-for-24 shooting with the Lakers missing two starters in Anthony Davis (left heel contusion) and Rui Hachimura (illness). “Biggest thing that stood out. … He played hard. Almost 40 years old and played the hardest on our team. It says a lot about him.”
And it said a lot about the rest of this L.A. team that 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, plopping the microphone on the table in front of him to end the news conference.
As Redick made his way out of the room, he shouted back at reporters, “First thing I said to them.”
Redick began delivering the message by the way he distributed playing time.
He doled out just six minutes in the second half to D’Angelo Russell — and a season-low 22 minutes in total — as the coach mixed up his rotation to try to find a spark.
“Just level of compete, attention to detail, some of the things we’ve talked with 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 with that stuff. And other times, it’s just reverting back to certain habits. But it wasn’t like a punishment. It just felt 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 L.A. 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 takes coming beyond the 3-point arc. Austin Reaves scored 19 but was just 2-for-9 from 3. Gabe Vincent, who was the beneficiary of Russell’s reduced minutes, was 2-for-8 overall and 1-for-6 from 3.
James, who became just the sixth player in league history to reach 1,500 career games on Wednesday, was asked about Redick’s claim about effort.
“At the end of the day, especially when you lose bodies, you got to compete,” said James, who was matched up defensively with 6-foot-10 power forward Jaren Jackson Jr. for much of the night. “You got to compete even harder. You got to be out there giving it everything that you got and on both ends. I think there were times that we did that, but the majority of the time, I don’t think we sustained energy and effort.”
It was the second loss on the trip in which L.A. allowed 130-plus points, as the Lakers have plummeted to 28th in defensive efficiency in the NBA, allowing 118.8 points per 100 possessions.
“We got to compete, and we got to defend,” James said. “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.
“So, it wasn’t too much of the offense, even though we didn’t shoot the ball well. We got to do a better job of that. But defense, we got to hang our hat on that too.”