Austin Reaves: Lakers Focused On Doing Things Right Way During Winning Stretch
12/22/2024 03:05 PM
The rollercoaster that has been the Los Angeles Lakers in 2024-25 has almost been hard to keep up with. They started 3-0, then lost four of five. Then won six straight, then lost seven of nine. Now, they’ve won four of their last five and are looking like a completely different team than the one that started the year.
Originally, the Lakers looked to be an elite offensive team, largely led by Anthony Davis and Austin Reaves with primary playmaking duties on LeBron James and Dalton Knecht as the spot-up shooter. At the same time, they employed one of the worst defenses in all of basketball. But in their last five-game stretch, they are the complete opposite.
They have the worst offense in the NBA and the best defense, a shocking turn of events after what transpired before the Emirates NBA Cup break. But Reaves knew during the losing streaks that the Lakers simply needed to believe in what they were doing and that results like this would come, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Anytime you’re winning it’s great. We live two lives I think and it’s you’re happy when you win and pissed off and sad when you lose. So you just gotta believe in the process of what we’re doing and doing things the right way. If we’re doing things the right way and you lose obviously you’re not happy, but you can build on the things that you were doing. I feel like some of those games that we did lose, we were doing that. We were building, being process oriented… It sucks to go through those stretches but it is the NBA and you’re gonna have stretches like that."
Reaves, for one, is not surprised to see the Lakers turn around their defense in this way. Given what the coaching staff has preached and Davis’ existence on the roster, there is no shock for the young Lakers starter:
“Yeah. I mean, yeah, I thought once we gelled together and really buy into what the coaches say game to game, I feel like anytime you got a guy like AD on the back line of defense you can be a good defensive team. You just gotta have some structure around that. He anchors our defense, offense, everything but especially our defense. He basically is our defense and we gotta just help him throughout the course of the game."
Good defense has always been a more sustainable method of winning than good offense. And while the Lakers have shown they can be elite offensively, they knew that their process was building to get them to a place where winning on defense was their main priority.
LeBron James explains role in Lakers’ defensive improvement
Lakers superstar LeBron James spoke about the team’s improvement on defense, saying it stemmed from their blowout-filled road trip and recognizing that they weren’t going to be able to win games with offense forever.
But he also made a change, recognizing that defensive communication was going to have to go through him.
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