Against a team as good as the Thunder, there is no margin for error. LeBron James discussed the attention to detail required for LA to have success against OKC before the series even began.
So, when LA played Game 1 and had 18 turnovers, that didn’t exactly put them in a position for success. The result went as expected: the Thunder beat the Lakers fairly easily.
After the loss, Lakers head coach JJ Redick mentioned how the process was good, but the execution was lacking.
“When we made gameplan mistakes,
they hurt us,” Redick said. “I thought the Houston Game 5 was the most gameplan mistakes we made in a playoff game so far. We, obviously, lost that game. You’re playing the world champs. Your margin for error is not very high. You can make mistakes. Basketball is a game full of mistakes. There were just too many tonight. We got to clean that up.”
Despite the final score, the Lakers stayed within reach of the Thunder early on. It was an eight-point game at halftime, and midway through the third quarter they cut the lead to four. However, OKC requires 48 minutes of concentration. LA missed their next three shot attempts, Jaxson Hayes had a turnover and the Thunder went on a 6-0 run, bringing the lead back up to double figures.
“I just think we had some gameplan breakdowns,” LeBron said. “What we’ve been preparing, we had some breakdowns. They’re going to test you, obviously. They’re going to see how many times they can make you have gameplan breakdowns. We had a few, almost too many versus a team like this. We know what they’re capable of doing. They can go on a run where it’s like ‘We got them right here, it’s a two-possession game, three-possession game’ and then boom, it’s a double-digit lead. That’s what some of the great teams do. Can’t have compound mistakes.”
Minus LeBron, every other Laker has room for improvement. Jake LaRavia was struggling and gave the team nothing offensively. Austin Reaves had one of his worst games ever. He shot 3-16 from the field and had a team-high four turnovers.
Reaves is supposed to be the franchise guard, and that performance wasn’t even close to good enough.
“Just made a couple mental mistakes…If you watched [OKC] throughout the year, every time you make a couple mistakes in a row, they capitalize on those,” Reaves said.”
The good news is that this series is still very early. OKC did their job and won their home game. The Lakers want to steal one and that’s still on the table with Game 2 set for Thursday. For them to accomplish this, they’ll have to be better in every statistical category, and the last thing they need is self-inflicted errors.
“Those little mistakes are going to hurt,” Hachimura said. “We talked about it after the game. Those little stuff, they hurt us. This is the first game. Of course, we have more games but I think we have to communicate better on those mistakes. Especially after coming out of timeouts, those are going to be important positions for us so we have to lock in.”
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.
