After a series of losses suffered by the Lakers over the last week, the teams are in danger of falling apart. Wednesday’s loss was historically bad on its own, and combined with a resounding loss to the Timberwolves on Monday, it was the worst consecutive loss in franchise history.

In short: the Lakers are doing badly!

Things can snowball quickly, as the Lakers saw last season. A series of poor results after the in-season tournament derailed everything and proved costly at the end of the season. Head coach JJ Redick seemed to be aware of all this when he spoke about the loss to the Heat after the game.

Discussing the fact that players need to be aware of what’s going wrong, he also acknowledged that it could divide the group.

“There has to be some ownership,” Redick said. “I think when a group doesn’t perform well, that’s what happens… you can become divisive and it’s easy to not want the ownership anymore. Especially if it’s embarrassing.”

This is one of those moments where Redick’s experience as an NBA player, despite being a first-time head coach, proves crucial. He knows how things can go wrong in the locker room and how to approach things.

And when asked how to avoid splintering the team, Redick said he plans to meet with both coaches and players.

“Something I will talk to my staff about, definitely the group, definitely individual people,” Redick said. “We have good people and we have people who want to win and people who want to play the right way. Figuring out how to do this together is, in my opinion, the challenge for almost every team. If you can do it – and we did it, we showed we can do it – you just want to get back to it, and that’s what we will do.”

This is also the value of a good communicator as a head coach. Redick did a great job throughout the season clearly assigning players their roles, highlighted by D’Angelo Russell’s seamless transition to the bench.

While there is value in communicating clearly, the team also needs to respond to things. As Redick said, he takes the appropriate amount of responsibility, but it also falls to the players.

This is a pivotal moment in the Lakers’ season. Everyone is saying the right things about it right now, but actions speak louder than words.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.