Lonzo Ball and the Los Angeles Lakers' starters were benched down the stretch of their 101-92 loss to the Toronto Raptors.

The Lakers were trailing 91-83 when Walton removed Ball, Brandon Ingram, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Larry Nance Jr. and Brook Lopez from the game with just under four minutes left to play.

"I took the starters out a little early in the third because they didn't get back in transition defense. which is our No. 1 key to being a good defensive team," Walton said. "We talked about how important that third quarter was with the momentum of the game changing and them being a playoff team, so we can't afford to give those up so as a teaching lesson we took them out a little earlier than I normally have done."

"Unfortunately, we didn't get back on defense again with four minutes to go in a close winnable game," Walton added. "You can't just give away free points. To let them know how serious we are about transition defense, we pulled them out again. We were going to let the starters see what they can do with the game. But when they didn't get back on the break, they are telling me and each other that they don't really want to finish that game."

"I think we just lost our intensity, to be honest," Ball said. "A good team over there and they came back [in the] second half strong, and we didn't accept it very well and we lost."