Who's Most to Blame For Los Angeles Lakers' Choke Job vs. Chicago Bulls?

Late Thursday night, Josh Giddey and the Chicago Bulls blessed us with the best finish to a game in the NBA this season.

And the Los Angeles Lakers found themselves on the wrong end of Giddey's heroics.

With just 10 seconds play (10.1, to be exact), Patrick Williams hit a three to cut a five-point lead to two. On the ensuing inbound attempt, Chicago got a steal and Coby White hit a three to take the lead.

After Austin Reaves hit a driving layup to put L.A. back on top, Giddey inbounded the ball, got it back at the opposite free-throw line, took one dribble and drilled a beyond-halfcourt heave for the win.

The entire bonkers sequence, again, took just over 10 seconds of game time.

Things started unraveling long before that, though. The Lakers had a 17-point lead in the fourth quarter. Coughing up all of that takes a team effort.

And we're here to divvy up the blame among several of them. There might even be some spillover to the Bulls' roster.

This problem wasn't just on display Thursday.

L.A. is 1-4 in its last five games. Since the trade deadline, it's in the bottom five in the league in the percentage of opponents shots that came from beyond the three-point line.

And if the Lakers can't figure out how to scramble out to shooters more effectively, they may not be long for the postseason.

The shortcoming was on vivid display against the Bulls, who went 11-of-14 from deep... in the fourth quarter alone.

On several of those makes, L.A.'s rotations were either a half-step slow, or its transition defense was caught flat-footed.

And given the personnel in the starting five (which played most of the fourth), maybe that shouldn't be all that surprising. LeBron is 40. Luka Dončić has long been known to tune out on the occasional defensive possession. And Austin Reaves is often the target of mismatch hunting.

That puts a lot of pressure on the last two players in LeBron-Luka-Reaves lineups, which is maybe why Jarred Vanderbilt should spend a little more time with them.

On balance, JJ Redick has done a fantastic job in his first season as a head coach.

His offensive principles and sets are imaginative. He has a team that few would have expected to be above average defensively ranked 14th in the league on that end. And 50 wins are still within reach.

So, listing him here is probably a little nitpicky. But Redick is probably being as hard on himself as any writer could. And he'll surely identify some adjustments he wishes he'd made.

One possibility could have been simply playing Jarred Vanderbilt more in the fourth. He was a plus-nine in the game. He may not be the team's most disciplined defender, but he's likely its most tenacious. And just having his energy on the floor could have disrupted one or two of those Bulls' threes.

He's obviously smaller than Jaxson Hayes, but that wouldn't have necessarily been a bad thing under the circumstance. Chicago was killing L.A. from the outside, and Vanderbilt is better suited to cover the three-point line than Hayes is.

Again, all of the above may seem like a small thing, but changing the outcome of one or two possessions could have been the difference in a game like this.

At various points over the last few years, it's been reasonable to argue Luka Dončić is the best basketball player in the world.

Injuries have largely kept him out of that conversation this season, but he's had his moments in 2024-25, including with the Lakers.

Thursday wasn't one of them, though. As the Bulls' avalanche of threes was washing over his team, the 26-year-old went 2-of-5 from the field for four points in the fourth quarter.

If L.A. is going to be a real contender, it needs Dončić to be the on-court killer he's been through most of his career, but especially during the 2024 playoffs.

It's hard to imagine that version of the five-time All-Star just sort of idling by as an opponent erases his 17-point, fourth-quarter lead.

Conditioning may still be an issue, too. Since joining L.A., he's averaging 10.6 points in 10.0 minutes in first quarters. He's at 5.2 points in 7.1 minutes in fourth quarters.

Whatever has Dončić more engaged at the start of games, whether physical or mental, needs to start showing up more often at the end of them.

When looking for someone to blame for this specific game, it's hard to get much further than LeBron James.

He was part of the problem for the perimeter defense, and he wasn't able to do much to slow Chicago's run on the other end.

James went 1-of-6 from the field in the fourth quarter. His first four shots were all jumpers. And all four missed. Two twos and two threes, all of which came from beyond the free-throw line. The first time he went to the hoop, against Nikola Vučević, he scored.

Settling for jump shots, whether the product of tired legs or not, gave Chicago opportunities at long rebounds and in transition.

But the biggest blunder, of course, was his inability to inbound the ball after Patrick Williams cut the lead to two with 10.1 seconds left.

Josh Giddey certainly deserves some credit for the steal, but that pass is almost criminally casual. Under the circumstances, and considering LeBron is one of the two or three best players of all time, it's hard to fathom how he wasn't more careful or deliberate with the ball.

As natural as it is to blame the losing team after a meltdown like this, let's just take a moment to celebrate the red-hot Chicago Bulls.

As you've seen, L.A. had a lot to do with this result, but Kevin Huerter, Nikola Vučević, Coby White, Patrick Williams, and of course, Giddey had to step up and hit those threes.

And they've been doing that a lot all season.

Chicago is third in the league in threes per game. It's 9-2 in its last 11 games.

And while it's probably too late to start thinking about this team as a potential spoiler in the playoffs, this run has to at least boost our collective optimism for this young core's future.