“Move Your Feet a Little Bit”: Reggie Miller Called Out Luka Doncic’s Defensive Efforts vs Pistons

For nearly three quarters last night, the Lakers looked like they’d have a chance for a much-needed signature win against the East-leading Pistons. It would have been the perfect present to LeBron James on his 41st birthday, but instead, all the purple and gold ended up with was a meltdown and yet another double-digit loss.

The final box score doesn’t paint a pretty picture for the Lakers. They allowed the Pistons to shoot 63% from the field and over 71% from 2-point range because they couldn’t keep Detroit away from the rim. The Pistons ended the night with 74 points in the paint, and the disparity in toughness was impossible to ignore.

Reggie Miller was calling the game, and he wasn’t pleased with the Lakers’ defensive effort, calling out Luka Doncic in particular on a play late in the second quarter.

On this play, Jalen Duren drove past a turned-around Jake LaRavia to the rim. Luka, just a couple of feet away, made no attempt to play any help defense, and instead stood rooted to the spot as Duren got to the basket.

Any criticism of Luka’s defense is totally fair, especially because he’s talked a big game about wanting to improve on that end of the floor. There are stretches where he does seem to try on D, but it’s rare that he’s able to put together a complete defensive effort for all four quarters. That’s only exacerbated by the rest of the Lakers’ defensive ineptitude.

That being said, this was sort of a weird play to call him out on. He threw his hands in the air not to show up his teammate, as Miller seems to be implying, but to call attention to the blatant elbow to the back of the head that Duren hits LaRavia with.

Does that excuse him not trying to stop Duren when he made his move? No, but after an official review, Duren was called for a flagrant foul.

The Lakers are in a tough spot. They’ve rarely been fully healthy all year, and while much of the time they were able to outscore teams with Luka and Austin Reaves, they don’t have that luxury now as Reaves is set to miss about a month with a calf strain.

Most of the top teams in the West — the Thunder, Spurs, Rockets and Wolves specifically, all know how to D up. That puts the Lakers at a huge disadvantage, because they’ve done much more talking about playing good defense than actually doing it.

It starts with Luka. He’s the leader of the team, and it’s only going to do so much good for him to score 30 if he gives up 30 to his man, too. Take his turnover numbers into account and you can see how the Lakers will have a difficult time overcoming good teams.

The Lakers’ upcoming schedule is pretty soft. They need to stack some wins to stay in the race, and to do that, they need to play some defense. We all know what their New Year’s resolution is going to be. Let’s see if they keep it.