
Imago
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Imago
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Imago
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Imago
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Pat Riley, who was honored with a statue outside Crypto.com Arena, had a clear message for the Los Angeles Lakers tonight. The Showtime era legend wanted Luka Doncic, LeBron James, and Austin Reaves, aka the Big 3, to “kick some Boston a–.” Instead, JJ Redick’s team closed the regular season series 0-2 against their archrivals with an embarrassing blowout defeat. It infuriated many, especially a three-time champion who was on the post-game panel.
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“It’s the Boston Celtics, no, Tatum, you’re at home,” James Worthy said on Spectrum Sportsnet. “You show no, really, to me, no respect for the uniform… They’ve got to decide who they want to be because right now, I’m not sure.”
Apart from shooting 39.1% from the field, their second-lowest, the Lakers were out-rebounded (39-59) and outplayed. Luka Doncic led the team with 25 points but had only three assists with a game-low minus-21 in 33 minutes. The Celtics guarded him well, taking away his passing lanes, daring him to score on Baylor Scheierman and Hugo Gonzalez. Hence, a lot of Doncic’s shots were fadeaways in the post, drilling threes, but he couldn’t get his teammates going.
“I don’t know if they understand the history, not these, not these guys,” Worthy said. “I don’t know if they get it. This is the Boston Celtics and the Lakers at home, they got to figure it out.”
“You show no, to me, no respect for the uniform. OK? When you come out and get out-rebounded, offensive rebound after offensive rebound — you can sniff out weakness — that’s what they[Celtics] did.”
James Worthy on the Lakers tonight pic.twitter.com/AD4YYiJMVy
— 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐩𝑮𝒐𝒍𝒅 🏆 (@PurpGolded) February 23, 2026
Riley had an 11-8 playoff record against the Celtics from 1984 to 1987. His Lakers team faced them in three NBA Finals in that span and won two of them.
“The Celtics were our standard and our measuring stick, we respected everybody else in the NBA,” Mychal Thompson told Mark Medina of EssentiallySports. “But we knew if we wanted to win a title that we would have to go through Larry Bird and the Celtics.”
After tonight’s loss, the Lakers are 16-11 at home. Only three of their total 22 losses have been by fewer than 10 points, which also means they get outplayed more often than a top team should. The only high point was the unveiling of Riley’s statue outside the arena. Amid boos filling the arena right after the game, Redick also did not hold back with his critique.
JJ Redick reveals how the Celtics outplayed his Lakers team
The Lakers had only 18 assists as a team, with little ball movement, which is a really low total in today’s NBA. Even the head coach admitted to it, and he did not soften his assessment. On the contrary, Jaylen Brown and Payton Pritchard, who combined for 62 points, were able to contribute with 15 assists in total.
“We just gotta do a better job of finding guys and moving the ball,” Redick said postgame. “We did enough defensively, we were just awful offensively tonight.”
Credit to the Celtics, who are last in the league in pace (95.77), deliberately slowed the game down. The Lakers, who often rely on fast breaks, could only score nine fast-break points today. They had to settle for contested jumpers and struggled to generate consistent paint pressure, allowing the visitors to score 48 points in the paint. James added 20 points on 9 of 21 shooting, while Reaves only managed 15 points on 4 of 10 shooting, nowhere near enough.

