Los Angeles Lakers Head Coach J.J. Redick said he was “embarrassed” following a 41 point loss to the Miami Heat. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni are joined by the Athletic’s Jovan Buha to discuss the aftermath of the loss, the recent play of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and where the Lakers go from here. Then, Caitlin Cooper, from “Basketball, She Wrote”, joins the show to talk about the Pacers recent struggles and what is bothering Tyrese Haliburton. Finally, Es and Dave check in on presumptive number one overall draft pick Cooper Flagg and share some funny quotes from the night in basketball.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni, Jovan Buha, Caitlin CooperExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson MoodySubmit your questions to The Athletic NBA Daily mailbag: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5939460/2024/11/25/nba-podcast-mailbag-athletic-daily/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Why are the Lakers struggling this season?
It was going to be because of their defense and because likely their shooting didn't hold up on that particular night to compensate for their defense. This year, it's so many different reasons that I don't exactly know how you go about fixing it, and sometimes they seem at a loss from it other than the common theme normally that they bring up a lot of times is we didn't play hard consistently.
Yeah.
Seems to be going around. Seems to be a common thread tonight. I wanted to ask about Pascal and, you know, kind of the blend of identity they've had or trying to incorporate him with the way that the Pacers played last season. I know you've wrote about it before, about like this is sort of two teams in one or two different styles of play in one.
Is that part of the reason they might be struggling to figure out how to win in certain games?
Yeah, I mean, their biggest problem offensively is their loss of transition frequency and what their efficiency has been there. The half court offense is still decent and they're reincorporating Benedict Matherin and they've added Juris Walker into that rotation. And this is not to say that any of the players are bad or that their one style is better than the other.
But when you're looking at Tyrese and he's also facing exaggerated coverages, he's looked limited in games to me. Pascal is a guy, you know from covering him in Toronto, that he's very good at using the high seal in transition. And then that creates a very big catch area. But if you don't get that high seal and then you're in the half court, it can be a slower process.
And that could be for both reasons, good and bad, because Pascal generally, not so much necessarily in this game, but could be very good at dragging out a double team, creating space for other people. He's a good playmaker. But now... They played fast with Benedict Mather as a starter at the beginning of last season.
They continued to play fast with Pascal as a starter at the back end of last season. But those people were never all playing at the same time. So, like, tonight when you're watching the third quarter and they start to make a run, it's Tyrese, it's TJ, it's Johnny Furphy, it's Obi Top, and it's them looking for guys where Tyrese is being face-guarded.
94 feet it's good when their numbers are much better when Tyrese is playing with either Andrew Nembhard or playing with TJ McConnell so somebody else can quickly get into offense they have people who are probably filling the spacing lanes and then they have the rim runner you can tell a lot of times in these games that the spacing template just isn't right and on for what their two-side fast break should be there's been some breakdowns there and that was in part why the second quarter I made a joke that it was like watching a team throw a beach ball around at a concert but some of that was because of the spacing
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