LOS ANGELES — On paper, Sunday’s contest against the Pelicans looked to be an easy win for the Lakers. New Orleans was playing on the second night of a back-to-back, had seven rotation players out and entered the game a woeful 3-17 on the season.
And overall, it was a relatively easy win for the Lakers, who won 133-121 to extend their winning streak to seven games and counting.
However, it was not pretty.
At the halftime break, the Lakers were rolling, ahead by 20 points, but they fell asleep behind the wheel. The Pelicans shot 63% the rest of the way and kept things competitive enough during the second half, to force Los Angeles to play their standard rotation until the final minutes of the game.
New Orleans feasted inside the paint, scoring 63 points. Once they started eating, they went for seconds, thirds, and fourths.
“I think sometimes you get a lead like that and you can, I hate saying this, but teams can get a little bored and that’s what we’re trying to get away from, is just continuing to be a process team and didn’t think we were great with that tonight,” head coach JJ Redick said postgame. “I didn’t think our defense was good for the last three quarters.”
The Lakers look like two completely different teams when viewed from either side of the floor.
On offense, they are one of the best teams in the NBA. They overwhelm teams. There’s a sense of inevitability about the trio of Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves and LeBron James. At some point in each game, they’ll go on a run their opponent won’t recover from. And that’s a big reason why they’ve won 15 games already.
Defensively, however, the Lakers are many, many steps behind. As long as teams are patient, good looks at the basket also feel inevitable.
The championship habits that exist on offense aren’t yet as apparent on the defensive side of things. If they want to truly contend in the West, then they can’t just try to win a shootout every night, even if they do employ the best offensive backcourt in the NBA.
The good news is that, while they clearly need to improve their defense, they’ve still been able to rack up wins. A 15-4 record is incredible. Only the defending champion Oklahoma City Thunder have a better record in the Western Conference.
“There’s a lot of things that I really like about our basketball team,” Redick said. “It’s okay 19 games to say, ‘Hey, we’re not where we want to be.’ Like, that’s okay. That doesn’t take away from anything we’ve done or anything that any individuals have done so far this season.”
The Lakers can be one of the league’s most elite offenses this season, powered by a couple of All-NBA-level guards while still having glaring holes to fix. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.
It’s commonplace for teams to be a work in progress a quarter of the way through the season. No team is where they want to be at season’s end at this point in the season. What’s uncommon, especially for the Lakers in recent seasons, is that they are still racking up wins at an incredible rate while addressing their flaws.
It also means that, if those shortcomings are corrected and the Lakers do make strides defensively, whether through player development or roster upgrades, then this could turn into something far more than a hot start ot the season.
“It’s nice to sit here and be 15-4 and be like, ‘Oh, the results are great,’” Redick said. “And we should be proud of being 15-4 after 19 games. It’s a great start. There’s a lot of slices of pizza left in the box that we can still get after.
“There’s a lot of room for improvement for our team, which to me is a positive.”
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