Rui Hachimura and the Los Angeles Lakers returned to the court on Monday night after having their previous two games postponed due to the Southern California wildfires.
While it was a nice distraction to get back on the court and play the San Antonio Spurs, things went south quickly for the Lakers in the second half. The team was leading 84-74 late in the third quarter before being outscored 52-18 the rest of the game to suffer a blowout defeat.
The Lakers really struggled on the defensive end and Hachimura discussed what went wrong.
“Our defense was one to five. When we get switched up and somebody posts up our smaller guys and they’re waiting and all of that, we have to have a low man,” Hachimura said.
“Of course, Chris Paul, he’s one of the greatest point guards who’s ever played. He’s always looking at the other five. He was just skipping the ball. So, it was hard for everybody to close out and make a play. But it was a whole thing that we planned [for] it. When we do one to five, AD (Anthony Davis) wants to be on the top. So, we didn’t really have a low man or anybody protecting the rim. So, yeah, it was tough for us. We have to be more physical, and everybody has to have a mentality of protecting the rim.”
The Lakers have now lost three straight games coming off their best stretch of the season. Hachimura was really blunt in assessing what has gone wrong and what they need to do to get back on track.
“I think we gotta play harder. We gotta play for each other,” he said. “I think the past three games, we kind of relied on our individual skills and all that. We just gotta start playing together again like we did in December and get back on track. It’s both sides, offensively and defensively, we’re not playing for each other right now. So we gotta kind of stick together and get back on track.”
Given everything the team has been through in the last week it was understandable that they weren’t at their best against San Antonio. Now though, the focus level has to flip back on as the margin for error is very thin moving forward for the Lakers.
Rui Hachimura discusses challenges Lakers have faced due to wildfires
The whole Southern California community is going through a difficult time right now due to the wildfires and Rui Hachimura spoke about the challenges that has brought on for the Lakers.
“Every day we literally have a different schedule, different news,” Hachimura said. “Everything just really depends on this fire thing. We don’t know our schedule for the next day. We are kind of worried about our houses and all that. Some of my teammates have to evacuate their homes. So, it’s been a lot. But, it is what it is. We talk about [how] we have to kind of switch our gear. We can’t be sorry for this. We just have to lock in.
“I think there’s a lot of distractions right now [and] a lot of things going on, but we just have to focus on ourselves and have to get back to our track.”
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