ORLANDO, Fla. — In a moment when the crowd was quiet and the in-arena music stopped blaring, you could hear the Orlando Magic bench screaming out instructions to teammates on the floor, frantically pointing to places the Lakers were trying to attack.
The yelling was clearly heard from the other side of the court, and the Orlando defense responded, talking their way through switches.
That LeBron James still found a seam and made a tough shot didn’t matter. The Magic were connected. They were communicating. They looked, really, like the Lakers used to look, an energy that carried over to Orlando’s offense in a 118-106 win over the Lakers.
“Used to” might be a little harsh since the Lakers have only had a completely healthy team available for two games since Feb. 28. During that time, the team had to play for stretches without James, Rui Hachimura or Jaxson Hayes. It also has needed to rest Luka Doncic, Dorian Finney-Smith and Gabe Vincent and hold out Austin Reaves.
But the Lakers (43-28), for the second straight game, looked like a team trying to recapture its defensive identity.
“We’re going through it a little bit,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “We gotta get back into the flow and the rhythm.”
Like they did against the Chicago Bulls on Saturday, the Lakers unquestionably spoke less than the Magic (34-38), their switching and scrambling defense just a little duller than it had been before injuries started to pile up.
“I think we just gotta look back at the way we played on that eight-game winning streak,” Doncic said. “We’re physical. We [have a] hell of a defense. I think we just got a little bit satisfied. We can’t afford that right now.”
The shots they have been willing to concede — the Magic are the worst three-point shooting team in the league — went in. And the edge they played with on the defensive side of the ball for nearly half the season simply hasn’t been as sharp this month.
“We just, we look tired,” Redick said. “And I don’t know what contributes to that. That happens periodically throughout a season where the group gets tired. That’s what it feels like right now. Again, we weren’t able to sustain our level of intensity that we started the game with. And our guys, I thought started out really well.”
Since Hachimura’s injury knocked him out of the lineup for a dozen games, the Lakers’ identity has eroded, their rating sliding all the way down to 17th.
The team now has a losing record in March, dropping seven of 13 games.
Before the game, Redick said assistant coach Nate MacMillan summarized the situation best.
“You can’t build trust on the court unless you’re communicating,” he told the staff, “and we’ve gotta get back to communicating. We gotta get back to having a physical disposition with our opponent.”
The lack of talk has been a problem, no doubt. But the lack of individual stoppers has been problematic the last two games, the Lakers struggling to stop scorers when they get hot.
Saturday, Coby White hurt the Lakers early and late, his rhythm never really disrupted. Against Orlando, Franz Wagner and Paolo Banchero, players with a combination of size, strength and skill, attacked the weak points in the defense and combined for 62 points.
The Lakers found some intensity late in the second quarter, building a nine-point lead. But Orlando scored seven straight as the Lakers’ offense went cold, and the Magic continued to pull away in the third.
The Magic made half of their 10 threes in the third quarter as the Lakers sputtered, their bad offense causing bad defense and their bad defense preventing them from getting easy baskets in transition.
After trailing by 17 in the fourth quarter, the Lakers did rediscover a sliver of their defensive identity and cut the Magic lead to seven, but Wagner easily got past Doncic for a layup with no help at the rim.
The game was never in doubt again.
Doncic finished with 32 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. James had 24 points, six rebounds and seven assists. Reaves scored 18 points and Finney-Smith added 14 points.
The Lakers play Wednesday at Indiana, the first leg of a back-to-back set. The team has three back to backs in its final 11 games.
“We need the adversity. Especially being a new team, know we get to learn a lot about each other during tough times. You usually don’t see things when you winning,” Finney-Smith said. “So we got the chance to grow. We’re going to use this opportunity to grow.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
