LeBron absence hurting Lakers

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — Coach JJ Redick says the Los Angeles Lakers must find a way to win without LeBron James, but even he felt the absence of his injured superstar in a National Basketball Association (NBA) season-opening loss to the Golden State Warriors.

“It’s hard to forget about LeBron,” Redick said.

“The reality is, when you’re focused on the group that you have, you’ve got to make the group work.”

“I’ll be honest with you, I did have one moment in the first half when we had a few possessions when we couldn’t score against the zone (defense) and I thought ‘It’d be great to have LeBron.’”

Instead James was sitting courtside, besuited and bespectacled and largely impassive as he continues to recover from a flareup of sciatica.

Entering an unprecedented 23rd NBA campaign, it was the first time in his career that the NBA’s all-time leading scorer missed his team’s season opener.

Luka Doncic excelled with a near triple-double of 43 points, 12 rebounds and nine assists.

But Austin Reaves with 26 points and Deandre Ayton with 10 were the only other Lakers to score in double figures and Los Angeles, trailing by just one at halftime, had no answer when the Warriors opened the third quarter on an 18-4 run.

“The trend I see is that we continue to be a terrible third-quarter team,” Redick said.

“That was last year, that was the preseason.”

“(We’ve) got to rethink some things and it’s, you know, a two-way thing with the guys: What do they need at halftime to make sure they’re ready to play?”

“They’re not ready to play to start the third quarter.”

With James expected to be sidelined into November, Redick stressed before the game that not only Doncic but all of the Lakers role players need to be sharp.

“We need our guys to star in their roles,” he said.

“I don’t think that changes if LeBron is in the lineup or out of the lineup. We need our guys to star in their roles.”

That’s not what he saw on Tuesday.

“A microcosm of this game was, we did enough good things to put ourselves in a position to win for most of the game,” Redick said. “And when we didn’t do those things, they were self-inflicted.”

Doncic shouldered the blame for new teammate Deandre Ayton’s paltry seven shot attempts, saying he needed to communicate better.

And even after the impressive performance from the slimmed-down, toned-up Slovenian star there was another whiff of bad news for the Lakers as he had treatment after the game after appearing to feel discomfort in his groin late in the contest.

“Felt it a little bit, but it’s probably nothing,” Doncic said.