Jake LaRavia felt the starters didn’t set the tone against Hawks

While JJ Redick’s postgame press conference was quite funny in its brevity, there was something to take away from his answers, too.

The most memorable moment came at the end of the presser when, after being asked if he realized during the third quarter that the Lakers weren’t going to win, he said he could tell from the first two minutes of the game that they’d lose.

He then followed that up with a great one-liner.

In the midst of this hilarious exchange is the fact that Redick did not think the starters played particularly well to open the game, to say the least. One of those starters, Jake LaRavia, spoke after Redick and agreeed with his assessment.

“It’s always up to that first group to come out and set the tone and I just don’t think we really did that today,” LaRavia said. “We kind of came out and got punched in our mouth and didn’t really have an answer for it. They just outplayed us at the end of the day. We struggled defensively. We had some turnovers that were not very good and they were scoring off the turnovers which obviously doesn’t help.

“At the end of the day, it’s really up to that first group that starts to come out and set the tone and we just got to do a better job of that.”

To prove both LaRavia and Redick’s points, in the first five minutes of the first quarter, the starting lineup had a plus-minus of -7. From the jump, the Lakers looked well off the mark, a problem that only worsened as the game went on.

For now, though, this is the outlier game early in the season. The Lakers have, up to this point, brought the appropriate amount of energy in each game and this wasn’t an issue.

It will certainly be interesting to see how the team comes out against the Hornets on Monday. Everyone was pretty upset or annoyed about this loss. Hopefully, they come out with ab ig opening quarter and make a statement.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on BlueSky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.