The Los Angeles Lakers (17-19) continued their downward spiral with a disheartening 127-113 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies (12-23), marking their fourth consecutive defeat and second straight at home.
Lakers legend James Worthy expressed his dismay, stating, “You could see on their faces, they just didn’t have what it took to compete with them.”
Worthy, analyzing the team’s performance on Spectrum SportsNet, highlighted the lack of structure and the tendency to resort to isolation plays when facing challenges. He emphasized the need for better offensive movement and strategy.
“I don’t know what’s going with this team right now,” Worthy said. “To lose two [games] at home back-to-back after coming back off the road trip I don’t know what to say about it. It’s embarrassing. And they’re not playing with any structure. And when they get in trouble, they go into a complete iso. with no movement. It’s easy to guard that.”
Echoing Worthy’s sentiments, Robert Horry, a key figure in the Lakers’ championship history, emphasized the importance of returning to fundamental practices.
Horry stressed the significance of refining basic skills through deliberate drills, suggesting a revisit to foundational principles during practice to address the team’s current struggles.
“One of the things about the Lakers, I know they don’t practice much, but when you have games like this and you’re on a four-game losing streak, you got to go back into the lab. You got to go in and practice and go over the little things,” he said.
“I remember Phil [Jackson] used to make us do the stupidest little drills picking the ball up, pivoting and we used to be like ‘Why are we doing this?’ Because you need to go back into the lab and put the old school skills back into your head so fundamentals can broken down and you can do these fundamentals.
“And I think the Lakers right now, they’re not fundamentally sound in a lot things that they do. They got silly turnovers and they’re doing things that are just out of character.”
