The Lakers are back to square one with latest losing streak

With a third straight loss, it’s back to the drawing board for the Lakers.

LOS ANGELES - Things were going marvelously for the Lakers just 10 days ago. At that time, the team was coming off a comfortable win versus the Atlanta Hawks, their second victory in a row and their seventh win in nine games.

Since then, the Lakers have been an inferior version of themselves.

They lost two games on the road in Texas and after six days between games due to wildfires that devastated many parts of Los Angeles County, the Lakers returned to play on Monday and lost to a beatable San Antonio Spurs team 126-102.

This matchup was anything but normal. Given all that has transpired in Los Angeles over the past week, the atmosphere inside the stadium was a mixture of tension, anxiousness and excitement.

However, once play began, it brought some semblance of normalcy as the city returned to watching the Lakers trying to establish themselves in the West.

During the first half, things were looking good. LeBron James was going basket for basket against Victor Wembanyama and often got the better of him. Anthony Davis was leading the team with 13 points and the Lakers were up 63-53.

The halftime break featured Laker legend Michael Cooper getting his jersey retired. It felt like the night could have a storybook ending with the Lakers cruising to victory and the celebration of Cooper, reminding us all of Lakers exceptionalism.

However, storybook endings are for fairytales and reality is often much crueler.

The Lakers crumbled like a piece of paper in the second half. They were outscored 73-40, were dominated in the paint and only scored a measly 13 points in the fourth quarter.

The 2024-25 Lakers have been a team that has consistently been inconsistent, but the question is, how do they begin to stack wins together and dig themselves out of mediocrity?

"We got to stick together," Dorian Finney-Smith said postgame. "Long season, it's a real long season. All that it takes is one good win to turn this thing around and that's usually how it goes.

"First of all, we got to be better defensively. Shots are going to go in. We're putting the work in as a team. They're going to fall, so all we got to do is focus on that end of the ball. I feel like these last couple of games, we kind of took steps back defensively since I've been here and we got to fix it."

As a player who is a 3-and-D guy, Finney-Smith knows good defense when he sees it. The Lakers have reached those levels at times but haven't been able to do so consistently. Monday's loss was another example of what their floor can be defensively. They allowed 37 points in the fourth quarter and San Antonio got whatever they wanted inside.

"I turned to [Director of Player Development] Tye [Abbott], who had the scout today and I just was like, 'Man feels like there's no one in the paint for us.' Redick said after the loss. “That's what I saw in real-time and obviously, I have to look at the tape, but everything was at the rim, 66 points in the paint, it's tough."

With the Lakers only playing two bigs in AD and Jaxson Hayes, they have to figure out how to defend better if they want to play more small-ball lineups.

The defensive strategy of switching everything has, in some ways, canceled out what makes Davis an all-time defender and hasn’t resulted in better protection of the rim.

Obviously, Wemby's play for the Spurs impacted things tonight, but Los Angeles has struggled with this all season long.

The Lakers give up the third-most points in the paint, 52.8 per game and their defensive rating is 115.7, which is the sixth-worst in the NBA.

So, while it’s fair and understandable that the Lakers would have weak stretches in their first game after an emotional week, this performance isn’t an anomaly but more an example of who they’ve been throughout the season.

The good news is, despite these alarming figures, the Lakers are still three games above .500, only one game back from the fifth seed in the West and have more games in front of them than behind.

The path toward success is clear and players still feel it comes down to executing what the coaches are telling them to do.

"We didn't execute the game plan like we were supposed to," Finney-Smith said postgame. "But the coaches they gave us the right answers to the test. We just didn't use the study guide."

Let's hope the Lakers decide to be good students for the rest of this week and use the study guides they'll be given to pass their upcoming test versus the Miami Heat on Wednesday night.

If not, they'll be on their first four-game losing streak of the Redick era.

You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88.