By first quarter’s end on Sunday, the Los Angeles Lakers looked a bit of a mess and trailed the Utah Jazz, 47-29. By halftime, they had righted the ship and already stormed all the way back to enter the break with a 74-71 lead. For much of the second half, the two sides engaged in a back-and-forth affair before Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves made a handful of key plays down the stretch to propel Los Angeles to a 132-123 victory and a 3-o start to the year.
After the win, head coach JJ Redick emphasized
the importance of a game like that so early in the season for a team still growing together with so many new rotation players. Of course, doing so in a win is preferable but Redick made clear it would’ve provided valuable information regardless of the outcome.
“I talked about this earlier in the year last year. For, particularly, a new group of guys and this feels like a newer team, right, because of all the new faces, you need to build reference,” Redick told reporters. “Really, whether we had responded to the adversity of that first quarter, not being ready to play and not doing any of the stuff that we had talked about pregame, it still would be a reference point. Because we ended up coming back and winning, now it becomes a positive reference point and it’s a reference point for resiliency, right?”
Once Utah had built an 18-point advantage to close the first quarter, Redick saw his team quickly respond in the second quarter to extinguish the deficit and, ultimately, nab a road victory — something that shouldn’t be discounted, especially against a team that’s given the Lakers trouble in recent years.
“Winning on the road is hard in the NBA. These guys always play us tough, particularly here, at least since I’ve been here,” Redick said. “So I wasn’t surprised with how they came out and played offensively. But our guys were, we talked to them at the beginning of the second quarter and there was an immediate response and then we had to gut out a win. We had to gut out a win and I’m just proud of the group for that.”
