2023-11-11 15:00:30
LeBron James curled around an Anthony Davis screen near the right elbow, drove downhill and found himself in a situation he has faced more times than even the most meticulous chroniclers of his two-decade NBA career can count. There were multiple Phoenix Suns defenders in the paint, a shooter in the corner and a decision to make with a crucial game in the balance:
Shoot or pass?
It was a decision he faced a few nights earlier in Miami, with the Los Angeles Lakers down by one point at the end of the game. That time, he passed to Cam Reddish, who missed the game-winning attempt to seal L.A.’s loss to the Heat. It also was a decision he faced a few seconds earlier in Phoenix, when he again passed to Reddish, who had made just two of his 16 3-point attempts entering the game. Again, Reddish missed.
Given a reprieve after a Lakers offensive rebound, James saw Suns center Jusuf Nurkić helping on Davis’ roll, leaving alone the same guy who had squandered those two opportunities, with no defender within 10 feet of him. Shoot or pass? It was an easy decision for James.
“To all the naysayers and basketball savants that don’t know nothing about basketball and telling me I should have shot that shot in Miami instead of passing to Cam Reddish, well I did the same thing tonight because I trust my teammates and I make the right play every single time,” James said in a postgame TV interview on ESPN. “And game-ball (goes) to Cam Reddish, for sure.”
Reddish’s dagger, his fifth 3 of the game, pushed the Lakers’ lead to 118-113 with 1:10 remaining and sealed Los Angeles’ 122-119 comeback win over the Suns in their opener of the In-Season Tournament. It was the Lakers’ biggest win of the season — even more than the demons-slaying victory over the LA Clippers last week — and the type of victory that could turn their season around after it appeared to be spiraling for much of their road trip, including vast portions of this particular game.
James led the way with 32 points, 11 rebounds and six assists, but he had plenty of help. Five Lakers scored 15 or more points in one of the group’s better offensive outings. Davis notched 18 points, 11 rebounds and four assists. D’Angelo Russell contributed 19 points and nine assists. Austin Reaves, in a new sixth man role, had 15 points, seven assists and several key plays down the stretch. Reddish, elevated to the starting lineup in Reaves’ place, finished with 17 points, tough defense and that game-sealing 3. The Lakers now hold the edge over the Suns in In-Season Tournament group play and have a 2-0 lead in the season series, having won both games in a nearly identical fashion.
“Everyone that’s in our traveling party and everyone that represents this brand, we have a sense of urgency to want to get it right,” coach Darvin Ham said. “That awful taste of losing being in your mouth is just like, it’ll drive you crazy. I know it drives me crazy. I keep it all in perspective, but it drives you crazy. No one likes that feeling, dropping games.”
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The Lakers’ morale was teetering. They entered the game with a 3-5 record, and the mood around the group had deflated after an upbeat training camp and preseason. They had lost three games in a row and desperately needed a statement win against a good opponent in a hostile environment.
That desperation was clear 30 minutes before tip-off when the team’s starting lineup was announced. Ham made a shocking decision to move Reaves, seen by many as L.A.’s third-best player, to the bench in favor of Reddish, who had largely struggled up until this game.
The decision was kept under wraps leading into the game. When the Lakers arrived in Phoenix on Thursday, Ham texted Reaves to meet up and talk. Reaves estimated they talked for “15, 20, 30” minutes, a conversation both deemed productive.
“I had talked to my staff about it and everybody agreed that we needed to change up the music a little bit,” Ham said. “And it wasn’t, first and foremost, it wasn’t a demotion for Austin. It was just a realignment. If anybody remembers those great San Antonio teams where everyone in the world knew Manu (Ginobili) was a starter. But sometimes to balance out your lineup, you have to put a player of his magnitude in a reserve role. So now when the starters go to sit down and take their break, you’re not totally falling off a cliff. You have balance in the second unit.”
Despite moving to the bench, Reaves still played 35 minutes, the third most on the team, and all 12 in the fourth quarter as the Lakers deployed a two-man game with him and James.
“That was the thing we talked about: His minutes weren’t going to go down, and he’s going to finish the game for us,” Ham said. It’s just a difference between starting or not starting out at the tip. He was phenomenal tonight.”
Reaves noted that he respects Ham’s decision as his coach, even if he doesn’t necessarily agree with it.
“Would love to not have that, would love to have been playing better to not have those conversations, winning as a team,” Reaves said. “But my parents taught me at a young age that the coach is the coach. And his decision, regardless if you agree with it or don’t agree with it, you respect that. That’s what I did. We had good dialogue back and forth on what we thought we could do to be better as a unit. And, for me, as I’ve spoken about the last two years I’ve been in the NBA and even before that … winning is the main thing.”
Reaves spearheaded the Lakers’ 19-2 run late in the third quarter through the midway point of the fourth, a stretch punctuated by Reddish’s buzzer-beating momentum-swinging 3 to end the third. Overall, Reaves had six points and five assists in the fourth quarter alone.
The Lakers also made a savvy tactical adjustment to turn the game around. With Kevin Durant (who finished with 38 points) resting to start the fourth quarter, Ham altered his typically conservative defensive scheme to blitz Bradley Beal, forcing the second Suns’ star to make difficult passes and the rest of the Suns’ supporting cast to beat them. Phoenix’s offense ground to a halt in the fourth quarter for the second time against the Lakers this season, unable to score if Durant didn’t have the ball.
Here’s an example: Reddish and Christian Wood double-teamed Beal twice on the same possession and eventually forced him to throw a misguided pass that was intercepted by Rui Hachimura, who contributed a career-high four steals.
“I thought that woke us up a little bit,” Ham said. “We’re much, much better whenever we’re aggressive. Those blitzes turned into some deflections and some steals that led to us getting some easy buckets. Being able to play downhill and put pressure on their defense and got us to the line — a plethora of things that were positive stemmed from that coverage.”
The fourth-quarter run, which occurred with Reaves on the floor and Russell on the bench, erased yet another double-digit first-quarter deficit for the Lakers, their seventh in nine games this season. Ultimately, the Lakers won, the new starting lineup was better together (plus-2 in 12 minutes) and both Reaves and Reddish played well in their new roles.
Still, it’s unclear if the Lakers’ victory was due to the lineup change or occurred despite it. One thing is abundantly obvious and has been for much of the season: The Lakers should stagger Russell and Reaves as much as possible. The starting group wasn’t working together. Both players are at their best with the ball in their hands, and that’s before factoring in James or Davis, who should be the team’s two top offensive options.
Starting matters to players, no matter what anyone says publicly. Reaves and Russell are very similar players, and many of the arguments that apply for Reaves coming off the bench also apply to Russell. It’s easy to envision Ham reversing their roles, with Russell spelling Reaves midway through the first and third quarters rather than vice versa. Yet Ham chose to keep Russell in the starting group.
To be clear: Russell has outplayed Reaves this season. He’s averaging more points and assists, shooting better and has better on-off numbers. But Reaves has been the better player throughout the players’ Lakers tenure, possesses a higher nightly upside and is far more likely to be on the roster past the February trade deadline. He can influence the outcomes of games in more ways. There’s a reason Reaves closed over Russell in Phoenix despite Russell having played a better game through the first three quarters. There’s a reason the Lakers made a big fourth-quarter run with Reaves at the helm and Russell on the bench for the second time in three games. There’s a reason Reaves was on Team USA and earned a larger contract this past offseason.
Ham said he’s still determining if he’s going to stick with the new starting group.
“We’ll see. We’ve still got a couple of guys on the mend,” Ham said, referring to the injured Jarred Vanderbilt and Gabe Vincent. “We still got some guys trying to get their legs up under them that’s been out. We’ll see, man. The beautiful thing is we have options. We have some choices, and some good ones at that. And so, we’ll continue to study the film, look at the numbers and take it day by day and move forward and plug in who needs to be plugged in appropriately.”
It may not matter who starts if the Lakers win, and Ham can call Reaves’ new role a “realignment” instead of a “demotion.” Yet that’s the same verbiage he used when asked about the decision to move Russell Westbrook to the bench early last season. Reaves and Westbrook are very different players in very different scenarios, but Ham’s decision is not exactly a ringing endorsement of a player the Lakers openly touted as a franchise cornerstone, and one whom Ham predicted would be an All-Star soon.
Ultimately, Russell ended up not playing for the entirety of the fourth quarter. The Lakers looked their best against the Suns with James, Davis and Reaves flanked by bigger players such as Taurean Prince, Reddish, Hachimura and Wood. Starting Wood or Hachimura in Reddish’s place is another option to fix the first unit.
The Lakers had a near-scare in the first quarter when James appeared to hurt his lower left leg area when colliding with Durant. James limped around and had to check out, with longtime trainer Mike Mancias treating his leg until he returned to the fray to begin the second quarter. James said he hurt his shin — not his ankle or calf, as it seemed on video — and he played through pain the rest of the game. His status for Sunday’s game for Portland is unknown.
“It never loosened up,” James said. “… Pretty sore right now. Obviously, because the adrenaline is calming down and iced it and all that stuff. Now it’s pretty sore.”
Even if the Lakers had to scrap and claw to overcome another bad start, this is the kind of win that could change the course of their season. They have a clearer sense of their identity and how to build their foundational lineups, particularly in crunchtime. James’ trust and confidence in his supporting cast is even stronger. Their schedule lightens up significantly, with six of their next seven games at home. Two are against Portland, one is against Memphis and another is against Utah, all Western Conference bottom-feeders at the moment. The Lakers have a golden opportunity to climb above .500 and make up some ground in the already crammed West standings.
“It was good to just finally get over the hump at this early part of the stage in our season,” James said. “We’ve been playing from behind in a lot of our games and haven’t been able to take the lead in some of the later games that we’ve lost. So that was a good feeling.”
(Top photo: Barry Gossage / NBAE via Getty Images)
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