Now that the Lakers are set to play the Rockets in the playoffs, LA can focus on just one opponent and game plan for them.
The good news for the Lakers is that they won the regular-season series against Houston 2-1. The obvious bad news is that they’ll have to play without Austin Reaves and Luka Dončić, who are out indefinitely.
This provides the Lakers’ head coach, JJ Redick, with the difficult challenge of trying to win a playoff series without his two best players. After Lakers practice on Tuesday,
he established two keys to winning the series: rebounding and turnovers.
“Again, taking care of the basketball and boxing out,” Redick said. “That’s the series. Schemes, personnel, obviously important. But if we don’t take care of the ball, we don’t box out, we’re not going to win the series. They were No. 4 in scoring opportunities, we were No. 23. We don’t have the luxury with Luka and AR out of getting killed in scoring opportunities every single game. We have to box out.
“We’re going to place an emphasis on every drill and practice. We started practice with boxing out today. You got to put it in their mind and that was literally the only thing we said about Houston today. Today was about us and having a practice and getting sharp with our stuff. Tomorrow, we’ll introduce personnel. Thursday, we’ll do our scout like we would. Friday will be a reinforcement of that scout. Saturday, we’ll be good to go. The only thing we did today was box out and take care of the ball.”
Across their three regular-season contests, the Rockets outrebounded the Lakers 130-91. In fact, the Lakers lost the rebounding battle in every single game against Houston.
That didn’t stop them from winning more than they lost, but it’s a clear weakness they’d like to fix. Especially, as Redick has mentioned, now that Dončić and Reaves are out. This makes the Lakers even smaller and takes out two players who average 12.4 rebounds per game combined.
In many ways, rebounding is a team sport. It requires focus and a collective effort to box out, so regardless of who grabs the board, it’s someone on your side. Every Laker will have to be a better rebounder, especially players like Deandre Ayton and Rui Hachimura, who can fluctuate from having great rebounding games to poor ones.
Beyond the rebounding, turnovers will be a key. The Lakers, being shorthanded, will have to play as close to perfect basketball as possible. LA only lost the turnover battle once in their three games against Houston, so hopefully that continues now that LeBron James and Luke Kennard will be the main ball handlers for LA.
After Tuesday’s practice, Marcus Smart discussed another x-factor that’s hard to quantify, but is still a very real part of each playoff series.
“Willpower,” Marcus Smart said. “We’re competitors. We’ve been doing this for a while. We’ve been doing it at the highest level. They’re going to try to come in and punk us and if you’re willing to allow it, you will be punked. I don’t think we have any guys that’s willing to be punked on this team. We might not be the most athletic or strongest, but we got to have heart.”
They’ll need all that heart and more to come out on top, as the Lakers are clear underdogs in this series.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
