Lakers takeaways: Third-quarter struggles remain, when will LeBron James return?

On the day before the Lakers opened their regular season, JJ Redick said what excited him most about a new year was “the chaos.” It’s the constant need to problem solve, to find new ways for his team to improve and to handle the grind of each game.

After the Lakers’ loss to the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday, that challenge has officially begun as the 119-109 setback gave a first glimpse at just how much the Lakers still have to grow.

Here are three takeaways from the game:

A new season. The same problem.

The Lakers, whose third-quarter droughts last year forced Redick to plead with his players to do anything from rinse their mouths with mouthwash or re-tie their left shoes, again struggled coming out of the locker room after halftime Tuesday. After surging at the end of the second quarter to pull within one heading into halftime, the Lakers let the Warriors reel off an 18-4 run to begin the third quarter.

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“That’s on us players, that’s not on the coaches,” guard Austin Reaves said. “They come and give us what we need, give us the answers to the test. … We have to be better.”

Reaves scored just one of his 26 points in the third quarter, but came alive for 13 in the fourth when the Lakers closed a 17-point deficit to six.

Redick called the Lakers a “terrible third-quarter team to start.”

“Gotta rethink some things and it’s, you know, a two-way thing with the guys,” Redick said. “What do they need at halftime to make sure they’re ready to play? They’re not ready to play to start the third quarter.”

The Lakers’ LeBron James sits on the bench during the second half of Tuesday night’s game against the Golden State Warriors.

(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)

LeBron James sat straight upright at the end of the bench on an elevated seat cushion like a statue with his hands folded neatly in his lap. He remained stoic throughout the game, barely reacting to any plays as he missed a season opener for the first time in his career.

The Lakers won’t be whole until the soon-to-be 41-year-old superstar returns from his sciatic nerve issue, but the timeline remains unclear. He will not be reevaluated for at least one or two more weeks. Until then, the Lakers have to learn how to traverse life without him to keep pace in a competitive Western Conference where four games separated last year’s No. 2 seed from the No. 8 seed.

“It’s hard to forget about LeBron,” Redick said. “The reality is when you’re focused on the group that you have, you gotta make that group work. Sometimes you can just be like, ‘Oh my God, we’re gonna get LeBron back at some point.’ Like it’s awesome, but you are focused.”

Redick acknowledged that he caught himself in the first half briefly longing for James when the Lakers were struggling to score against a zone defense. It would have been nice to just give the NBA’s all-time leading scorer the ball in the high post, Redick thought to himself.

The Lakers instead tried to subsist on Luka Doncic, who scored 43 points, the third-most for a Laker in a season opener and the most since Kobe Bryant’s 45 in 2007. He added 12 rebounds and nine assists while Reaves and center Deandre Ayton (10 points) were the only other double-digit scorers for the Lakers.

“When you’re missing a guy like Bron, you’re not gonna fill that with one person,” Reaves said. “... I need to do something a little better. Luka needs to do something a little better, Rui [Hachimura has] got to pitch in a little more.”

Reaves had nine assists, tying Doncic for the team lead, but had five turnovers as the Lakers turned the ball over 19 times. Some of the miscues were “just dumb,” Reaves said. Others could just be early-season growing pains.

“It wasn’t the wrong read. It was the wrong pass at the right time, basically,” Reaves said. “So it’s just like learning those little things, and you learn those on the fly. You think about all the good teams in NBA history, all those teams kind of played together as a core for a long time, and know how to play alongside one another.”

The Lakers happened to be matched up against one of those cohesive teams. The Warriors have revolved around Stephen Curry and Draymond Green for more than a decade.

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Meanwhile, Ayton just signed with the Lakers this summer. The pick-and-roll chemistry between the Lakers guards and the new center was slow to develop during the preseason, especially because Doncic did not get a full training camp as he returned from a busy summer with the Slovenian national team.

On Tuesday, Ayton called himself a “confusing big.” He mused about how his tendency to linger around the free-throw line can cause problems for guards. There were times in the game he could have finished his roll better, he said.

Doncic said he hasn’t played with a big who prefers the pocket pass the way Ayton does. He previously thrived with high-flying centers Dereck Lively II and Daniel Gafford. Ayton had 10 points on five-of-seven shooting with six rebounds, but Doncic said he wanted to get the 7-footer more touches.

“That’s on me today,” said Doncic, who had three turnovers to his nine assists that left him one short of a triple-double.