CLEVELAND — The feel-good stories can only be so distracting.

Rookie guard Bronny James, the Lakers’ second-round draft pick in June and the son of star forward LeBron James, scored his first NBA points in Wednesday’s road loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse — 25 miles away from where Bronny went to middle school at Old Trail School and just a 30-minute drive from his hometown of Akron. Ohio.

The Dodgers beating the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series just 2 1/2 hours after the Lakers’ loss Wednesday night to claim the eighth World Series title in franchise history and their first full-season championship since 1988 also captivated Southern California sports fans — including Lakers players in the locker room postgame.

But the Lakers can’t simply “flush” their 134-110 blowout loss to the Cavaliers.

Not only because it disrupted their early goal of not losing two games in a row this season, which they already have after kicking off the ongoing five-game road trip with a loss to the Phoenix Suns on Monday.

But also because the Lakers will likely see issues that have plagued them early in the 2024-25 season that were also present last year.

“Oh, we’re going to have to watch this film,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said, with his team turning their attention to today’s road game against the Toronto Raptors. “Just based on the travel, we’ll be able to do that.”

That film session will likely confirm what was felt in real time Wednesday.

The Lakers’ transition defense was abysmal, conceding 26 fast-break points, marking the fourth consecutive game they’ve allowed their opponent to score at least 21 fast-break points.

Their 21 turnovers for 31 Cleveland points hurt. Multiple Lakers pointed to the team not being as organized as they wanted to be as a reason for the giveaways.

“I just don’t think the focus and the attention to detail of what we were trying to do was great,” Redick said. “I didn’t feel like it was an effortful thing or a competitiveness thing. It was just kind of a regress, if that makes sense, to a lot of the stuff that we talked about this (Wednesday) morning and pregame and some of the stuff we’ve talked about all season. That’s where you kind of have to say, ‘OK, we need to reemphasize some things and refresh some things, reteach some things.’ Whatever it may be.”

Lakers big man Anthony Davis spoke about the importance of staying organized offensively after the team’s shootaround Wednesday morning ahead of the game against the Cavaliers. And how the game typically doesn’t go in their favor when they don’t — as in their 14-point second quarter against the Suns.

“Even though we’re a new team, we’ve shown in four games what we’re capable of doing on the offensive end when we’re organized,” Davis said. “And especially the first three games and then even the game against Phoenix, we had great spacing, we got great looks offensively. This is the first game where we weren’t grasping (the offense).

“So it’s nothing about us being a new team. It’s nothing about us not knowing what to do, or whatever. We know exactly where we were supposed to be on the floor and what we were supposed to be doing — we just didn’t do it.”

These issues — offensive organization and transition defense — aren’t new.

The lack of offensive organization was an issue under previous coach Darvin Ham. They have played more organized under Redick, but there has been slippage in the last couple of games.

Opponents averaged 16.2 fast-break points against the Lakers last season for the league’s 27th-worst mark. Their 15.4 fast-break points allowed per game in 2022-23 also ranked No. 27. The Lakers have allowed 21.2 fast-break points per game in 2024-25 for the league’s worst mark.

There have been only five games.

The Lakers’ issues are correctable.

But with these deficiencies not being new — especially the transition defense — it’s fair to wonder how consistently those solutions can be applied.