For Lakers head coach JJ Redick, the problem wasn’t the five key players missing from the lineup — it was the 13 who actually suited up. What he saw Tuesday night wasn’t just a shorthanded team losing to a better opponent. It was a group, in his words, that played with “zero intent” and “zero execution.”

An injury report can explain a defeat, but Redick made it clear it couldn’t excuse the effort. Los Angeles was steamrolled from the opening tip in San Antonio, falling behind early and never mounting a serious challenge in a 136-108 blowout loss to the Spurs. By halftime, the outcome felt decided. Afterward, the first-year coach delivered a brutally honest assessment that placed the responsibility squarely on the players at his disposal.

“We got blitzed from the beginning,” Redick told reporters in his conference, before getting even more blunt. “I don’t know the belief level of the guys that were out there. You have some of these games that you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I’m going to get more shots tonight.’ And you just come out with zero, zero intent defensively and zero execution.”

The Lakers played on the second night of a back-to-back, and missed five key players: the superstar trio of LeBron James, Austin Reaves, and Luka Doncic, as well as defensive specialist Marcus Smart and starting center Deandre Ayton. Despite all this, Redick didn’t chalk the loss up to their schedule or injuries, blaming the team’s mindset.

Redick suggested the problem stemmed more from a lack of buy-in than poor execution, and the intent behind the play. That kind of cultural critique lands sharply. The Lakers have struggled on defense all season, and against a mismatch exploiter like Victor Wembanyama, everything fell apart.

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The Spurs center put up a historic 25 points in under eight minutes, a first in the play-by-play era. He seemingly walked into the paint every single time, ripping off 17 straight at one point. He finished the game with 40 points in just 26 minutes.

“Wemby blitzed us and we didn’t execute what we were trying to do,” Redick told reporters. “We could have showed 18 clips of us playing our defense. Not a lot to take away other than we suck at defense.”

Defensive Identity Crisis Is Becoming JJ Redick’s Lakers’ Defining Trait

This isn’t even close to the first time JJ Redick has directly addressed the Lakers‘ defensive woes. Even during the preseason, the defense was the biggest concern for the team, who are currently just one of two playoff teams in the bottom-10 for defensive rating at 117.5.

However, unlike the other playoff team on this list, the Denver Nuggets, the Lakers do not have the transcendent offense to propel them to a high level of success. In fact, LA’s offensive rating is just 0.1 points higher than its defensive rating, indicating a mediocre team getting by through execution in the clutch.

For a team with three clearly All-Star-level offensive players, this is unheard of. To make things worse, the team didn’t make any acquisitions to address their defensive issues at the trade deadline, leaving them to rely on internal pieces like Marcus Smart and Jarred Vanderbilt, who consistently struggle on offense.

The Western Conference leaves little room for this kind of indifference. If the Lakers cannot tap into their clearly high offensive ceiling, then they have to be at least competent, if not reliable, on defense, and Redick has his task cut out for him.