The Lakers beat the Raptors 131-125 on Sunday, and somehow the loudest argument coming out of it is about a guy who played less than two minutes. That's wrong. If you're mad at Bronny James for a brutal, turnover-marred stretch off the bench, you're mad at the wrong person.
The Lakers built a lead as big as 26 points. JJ Redick, trying to get his starters some rest with the game seemingly decided, emptied his bench. Toronto's reserves went to work. The Raptors outscored the Lakers 43-27 in the fourth quarter, and a laugher turned into a game that had to be closed out by Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Walker Kessler with the final minutes still live. Redick had to send his stars back in to protect a lead that had shrunk all the way down from 26.
Bronny James' line from that stretch is ugly on its face: under two minutes played, a minus-11, zero points, a turnover on an inbounds pass that sailed out of bounds. The stat line only looks like an indictment if you ignore how it happened. A reserve got thrown onto the floor at the exact moment his head coach decided it was safe to stop trying, against a Raptors team that had spent the whole fourth quarter proving it wasn't done. It's a setup for failure, one that would have looked bad on practically anyone wearing that bench jersey in that moment.
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RatingRedick said as much himself. "I won't make that mistake again," he said afterward. "I'll leave the guys in. You got to play to the final buzzer." That's about as direct an admission of a coaching error as you'll get from an NBA coach after a win. He's saying he let the bench down by putting them in a position they weren't ready to hold.
This has happened before. Two nights earlier, the Lakers blew a 25-point lead outright and lost to Golden State. Twice in two games, this team built a huge cushion and nearly handed it back, and both times the collapse traces to decisions about who was on the floor and when. If the pattern is real, the common denominator is the man making the substitutions.
RTGThe obvious pushback is that the Lakers won. They're 5-2. A few shaky bench minutes in a game they still took shouldn't be treated like a crisis. Except that's exactly the logic that lets a coach dodge accountability for a decision he already admitted was wrong. The final score bailed Redick out because Doncic turned in one of the great individual lines of the season. The second unit didn't do its job. Doncic finished with 45 points, 15 rebounds, six assists and five steals, carrying a game his coach had already tried to hand away. Credit Doncic for saving it, but don't let his rescue act launder the decision that made a rescue necessary in the first place.
Redick also spent his postgame complaining about officiating and picked up a technical arguing a no-call. Notice which mistake he actually owned without prompting: the bench call. He made it, it nearly cost his team a 26-point lead, and he said out loud that he's not doing it again.
Bronny James didn't blow a 26-point lead. His coach decided the lead was safe to stop playing for, got it wrong, and then had to watch his stars clean it up. Put the blame where the coach himself already put it.
