The air in Los Angeles is thick with more than just anticipation for a championship; it’s now laced with fury. Following a brutal blowout loss to the Suns, the Lakers franchise is shaking from the inside out, reportedly prompting a furious internal response from the organization’s owner. What went down on the court wasn’t merely an ‘off-night’; it was a complete organizational embarrassment, a three-part scandal caught on camera and exposed in post-game comments, revealing a power dynamic so toxic it threatens to derail the entire season.
Insiders suggest the owner’s reaction was white-hot, capped by a brutal, desperate declaration: “Get out from team!”—a response aimed at the internal chaos that has erupted behind the scenes. The question is no longer if the Lakers have a problem, but who is responsible for the dysfunction that played out in front of 20,000 fans and the entire basketball world. The answer lies in three key moments that perfectly encapsulate the tension brewing in Los Angeles: the public humiliation of a first-year coach, the systemic freezing out of a key player, and a shocking act of self-serving stat padding.
The Public Humiliation of the New Authority
The relationship between a star player and a head coach is often complex, but in Los Angeles, the power dynamic has tipped into a realm of public, televised disrespect that undermines everything the franchise is trying to build.
Picture this: The Lakers are being massacred by the Suns, down 21 points in a brutal blowout. On the sideline stands JJ Redick, the new head coach who has been praised all season for his strategic mind and communication skills. Redick is frantically trying to call a set play to inject some life or structure into the collapsing team. He shouts into the noise, the audio clearly picking up his desperate calls: “Lee! Lee! Lee! LeBron! LeBron!” He is executing his job, trying to rally his troops and run his offense.
And what is the object of his attention, the supposed leader of the team, doing? LeBron James is standing courtside, casually chatting and laughing with an opposing player, Jordan Goodwin, a former teammate now on the Suns. LeBron is locked in conversation, acting as if he’s at a summer pro-am game, completely ignoring the repeated, urgent shouts of his head coach. No acknowledgement. No response.
Redick is left with one option, one final, humiliating recourse to get his best player’s attention in the middle of a live NBA game: he is forced to call a timeout. This was not a strategic timeout to draw up a play. It was a time-out called literally just to compel his star to turn around and pay attention.
The gravity of this moment cannot be overstated. This was a public humiliation of coaching authority in front of the entire world. Can anyone imagine Michael Jordan tuning out Phil Jackson? Or Tim Duncan ignoring Gregg Popovich? These are champions who understood that respect for the hierarchy matters, regardless of individual legacy. For a rookie head coach like Redick, who is already fighting an uphill battle to establish his voice against a 40-year-old legend with more Finals appearances than Redick has years of coaching experience, this moment undoes weeks of effort. It validates every skeptic who asks, “Who is really coaching this team?” The answer, as the cameras showed, is not the man with the clipboard. The optics were terrible, immediately leading to an explosion on social media where clips went viral and comments flooded in about LeBron’s disrespect. While Redick tries to build a culture of accountability and system commitment, a moment like this, captured in 4K, sends a chilling message to the rest of the roster: the coach’s voice is optional.
Rui Hachimura’s Unforgettable Complaint
The Redick incident revealed a crisis of authority, but the comments from a key role player, Rui Hachimura, revealed a crisis of commitment and system failure, linking the entire debacle back to the star-driven style of play.
Rui Hachimura has been having a career year, shooting efficiently from the field and playing the best basketball of his tenure. Yet, in the blowout against the Suns, he finished with a stat line that was, quite frankly, bizarre for a starter: zero points, zero assists, zero steals, zero three-pointers attempted, and 0-for-1 from the field. He played 23 minutes as a starter and got one shot attempt. That’s not basketball; that’s an air traffic controller diverting every possession away from a highly efficient scorer.
Hachimura is known as one of the most professional, positive, and drama-free teammates in the league. He never complains to the media, making his post-game comments all the more significant. When asked about adjustments, he started diplomatically, stating, “We’ve been great today was the game that we didn’t really play for each other.” A standard, if slightly revealing, post-loss comment.
But when reporters pressed him specifically on his lack of shots, his deep-seated frustration broke through in a quote that should terrify the Lakers front office: “I don’t remember when I had the ball this whole game.”
Let that sink in. A starting forward on a championship-contending team literally could not recall touching the ball enough to be involved in the offense. He acknowledged the difficult reality, saying, “I signed up for that, I understand it,” a subtle nod to the fact that playing alongside ball-dominant superstars like LeBron James and Anthony Davis often means roles get diminished.
However, Hachimura wasn’t done. He then offered a direct, if veiled, critique of the team’s approach in the loss: “But with this, I think the whole team everyone knows and understands that’s not how we’re going to win. Those games that we’ve been winning, we’ve been passing to each other, we’ve been trusting each other and playing for each other to win those games.”
This is a crystal-clear call-out of the stagnant, isolation-heavy offense that took over during the blowout. Rui is not naming names, but he is pointing out that when the team abandons the ball movement, trust, and team basketball—the style that has been successful—they revert to iso-ball, freezing out key players and causing systemic failure. The fact that a critical starter was relegated to an accessory on offense, while the team’s leader was focused on conversations with the opposition, highlights the deep disconnect within the locker room. The game plan, whether by coaching direction or star-player preference, actively ignored one of its most potent weapons, exposing a complete disregard for the concept of team offense.
The Shameless 10-Point Run
The final nail in the coffin of team dignity came from LeBron James himself, in an act that critics swiftly labeled “the most shameless stat padding of his career.”
LeBron James owns one of the most incredible, historic streaks in NBA history: scoring at least 10 points in an absurd number of consecutive games—a testament to his longevity and consistency. Yet, against the Suns, that streak was in jeopardy. For most of the blowout, he was disengaged, passively moving through the motions, sitting at just seven points.
As the clock ticked down and the game officially entered garbage time, with the result decided and the team demoralized, LeBron checked back into the game. Why? To maintain the streak. He didn’t check in to try and spark a miracle run or to give the young guys a lesson in defense. He checked in, pulled up for a step-back three-pointer, drained it to get to 10 points, and immediately subbed himself out. Mission accomplished. Streak preserved.
The optics of this move were catastrophic. While a core starter like Rui Hachimura couldn’t touch the ball in a meaningful way, the team’s leader re-entered a lost game purely for the sake of an individual statistic, compounding the humiliation of the blowout.
Social media was immediate and brutal. The criticism wasn’t about the number of points, but the manner in which they were obtained. In a moment when a leader should be focused on the structural integrity of the team—or at least staying on the bench to prevent injury in a meaningless final two minutes—LeBron’s focus was clearly individual. It provided a stark and unflattering contrast: a star player’s obsession with a personal record while the team was collapsing around him.
The Foundations Are Shaking
The three incidents—the public defiance of the coach, the veiled but damning criticism from a key starter, and the self-serving pursuit of a personal streak—are not isolated events. They are symptoms of a deep, systemic crisis of organizational control and trust.
When a head coach has to call a time-out to stop his star from chatting with the opposition; when a starter can’t remember touching the ball; and when the face of the franchise prioritizes a 10-point streak over team optics in a blowout, the foundations of the organization are shaking.
The Lakers’ owner’s alleged fury and the four brutal words, “Get out from team!”, highlight the desperate mood sweeping through the front office. The question is no longer about winning basketball games; it’s about restoring order, re-establishing authority, and forcing a commitment to the “playing for each other” ethos that Rui Hachimura desperately pleaded for. Until the Lakers address the toxic power dynamic that allows a superstar’s self-interest to supersede the team’s system and the coach’s authority, their season will remain a spectacular, albeit deeply dysfunctional, soap opera. This organizational embarrassment has revealed the true nature of the current Lakers’ crisis, and the fallout is far from over.
