The Lakers' defensive identity vanishes into Phoenix air in loss

PHOENIX — The desert doesn't forgive forgetfulness. It reveals character by stripping away everything else. Tuesday night, beneath the harsh white lights of Mortgage Matchup Center, the Lakers stood exposed, their defensive principles dissolving like mirages, their identity evaporating into the dry air.

The Lakers lost 132-108 to the Phoenix Suns. 

They lost consecutive games for the first time in 28 outings. But past that, they lost something harder to quantify — that certainty of self, that knowledge of who they are when the ball stops moving and the threes start falling, and the scoreboard becomes a blaring confession.

Who are these Lakers?

The third quarter provided damning testimony. 

Phoenix scored 45 points on 72.7% shooting, a barrage of mid-range daggers and uncontested drives that turned a 10-point halftime deficit into a 26-point insurmountable hole. 

The Suns touched the paint on every possession, posting a 1.43 offensive rating in that territory. They turned 17 Laker turnovers into 24 points. They scored 62 points in the paint, converting 21 of 27 two-pointers. 

The Lakers managed five fast-break points. Five.

The numbers over the last 10 games compose a requiem: 5-5 record, 28th in defensive rating (122.0), dead-last in surrendering 16 three-pointers per game, 30th in opponent three-point percentage (43%). They're 22nd in their own three-point shooting (34%). 

These aren't anomalies. These are autopsies.

"The offense was clicking, our defense wasn't," LeBron James said, his 23 points providing little comfort. "That's literally what it was."

Literally. As in, literally a disaster. As in, literally the third time in 13 days the Lakers surrendered 130-plus, as in, literally the most points they've allowed through three quarters all season.

The rotation roulette hasn't helped. Austin Reaves returned from a three-game calf absence to score 17 points off the bench, shooting 6 of 11. He looked winded, then he looked right. He looked like a man finding his rhythm in a song whose beat keeps changing.

"Definitely felt weird coming off the bench," Reaves said. "But you know, it's basketball at the end of the day."

But is it? Basketball implies structure, cohesion and five players moving as one. 

The Lakers resembled five strangers sharing an elevator, each waiting for a different floor. They've started 17 different lineups in 28 games. They've had their full rotation of Luka Dončić, Reaves and James healthy three times this year. Three.

JJ Redick's preseason predictions about lineup stability now ring like a shorted doorbell on the fritz; his defensive schemes are crumbling like oily parchment paper. 

Zone defense? Opponents get at-will layups and open threes. 

Switch everything? Hasn't worked. 

Drop coverage? Constantly exploited.

"There's shortcuts you can take, or you can do the hard thing," Redick said. "It's just a choice... Comfortable doesn't win."

The choice, repeatedly, has been comfort. The Lakers have surrendered open threes. They've surrendered second-chance points. 

Against Phoenix, they surrendered, most damningly, the middle of the floor — a no man's land where Dillon Brooks, a player on his sixth team in six years, transformed into a destroyer. 

Brooks scored 25 points in 24 minutes, 10 of 15 from the field, 3 of 6 from deep, a journeyman's revenge narrative written in Laker blood.

"They play really hard," Marcus Smart said. "They just leave it all out there and uh no matter what happens, you know they keep going."

The Lakers did not keep going. They stopped. They stalled. They surrendered the first 13 possessions of the second half, a feat so grotesque it defies basketball logic.

"We're being real shitty right now, and it's showing," Smart said.

His profanity-laced statement tells the truth.

The Laker defense lacks foot speed. It lacks urgency. It lacks, most crucially, the "five guys on a string" connectivity LeBron referenced — that telepathic harmony where one rotation triggers the next, where help arrives before it's needed, where the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Instead, they have players who don't know what a "flood" is in the middle of games. They have help defenders who help the helper too late. They made Suns' center Mark Williams, who scored 18 points and nine rebounds, look like an All-Star against a defense that treated him like an afterthought.

"Personnel kind of dictates how you can play, how you would like to play," James said. 

But this statement trails into the space between excuse and explanation.

The Lakers' personnel suggests they should defend. They've shown they can. 

They were second in the West weeks ago. They held teams under 110. They rotated with purpose. They chose the hard thing.

Now they are choosing to be something else. 

Over the last ten, they chose to surrender 43 percent to opponents from the three. They chose to allow opponents to shoot 16 triples per game. 

They chose to allow Phoenix's Devin Booker dissect them for 21 points and 11 assists while Collin Gillespie added 16 points off the bench.

The question isn't whether they can flip a switch. It's whether they remember where the switch is, whether they can recognize their own reflection in the stat sheet's mirror, whether the purple and gold still mean what they meant when the season began.

Who are these Lakers? They are a team that wins when their offense scores 145. They are a team that loses when it doesn't. 

They are a team highlighted by Dončić's bruised calf and a bruised team ego and sense of self.

They are a team that has practiced these rotations, reviewed this film and shown these clips. They are a team that knows better.

They are a team making choices.

"Comfortable doesn't win," Redick said. 

These words hang in the air like a verdict.

The Lakers have been comfortable. The Lakers have been complacent. 

The Lakers have been, for 10 games and counting, a team that defends only when convenient, that tries only when easy, that wins only when the shots fall.

Who are these Lakers? The desert revealed them. The stats defined them. The quotes damned them.

They are a team searching for a defense, searching for an identity, searching for something real in a season that increasingly feels like a mirage.