The Los Angeles Lakers were in danger of dropping yet another home game on Tuesday night to the New Orleans Pelicans, but thankfully JJ Redick’s team was able to rally late for their third consecutive victory. The Lakers trailed by eight points midway through the fourth, but would score 14 straight and end the game on a 24-7 run to come away with a 110-101 victory.
The Lakers have not had good luck recently with close games down the stretch and, especially, when they’ve trailed late. And Redick believes it was good for his team to show that they were capable of a comeback win.
“Frankly, that’s not a win we’ve had since probably November, where we’re down late,” Redick said. “A lot of those early wins when we started 15-4, we had a number of double-digit deficits in the second half and just stuck with it and kept playing. It was a good win for our group to be able to do that again.”
The Lakers have now won three straight and could be finally rounding into form. But while Redick is confident they will get to where they want to be, he feels this team is still a work in progress.
“Again, we’re a work in progress and I would just say that. But I’m confident that we will eventually get to a good space.”
As for how the Lakers were ultimately able to get the win, and what caused them issues against the Pelicans on the night, Redick pointed to a number of different things and praised multiple players for their efforts.
“It wasn’t the prettiest game,” Redick noted. “Some of that was the turnovers. Some of that was, I think we had a couple stretches there where we were able to generate some corner threes, really some good catch-and-shoot threes that they didn’t go down. So, the offense didn’t flow as well. On top of that, they ran five or six different coverages against us. So, it created a little bit of a choppiness to the game, just in terms of finding the advantage.
“Unfortunately, as a coach, you don’t always know what coverage they’re gonna be in. We had some success in 77 and then they changed the coverage. We went away from that and then frankly, we were targeting Zion. But he played, I’ve seen him do it before and he had a tremendous defensive game and I think that led to us getting stalled out a little bit when they were in that switching group, which gave us some trouble. But again, the plays that you just gotta make to win.
“You referenced a number of the hand activity plays, the physicality plays, loose balls, [Marcus] Smart hitting that big three. I thought the play, as we were getting back into the game down eight, where we got a good look from Luke [Kennard] in the corner in transition. Jaxson [Hayes] and Smart both crashed. We end up with the ball, AR (Austin Reaves) gets the three, like those were the type of plays we had to make to win tonight. [It] felt good down the stretch. [It’s] just, we didn’t have any size at the rim. We posted Luka [Dončić], he’s scored in the post. He got fouled in the post. Then he makes the huge three and just closed the game out for us.”
It was truly a team effort for the Lakers as all five starters reached double-figures while Jaxson Hayes and Luke Kennard were also excellent off the bench. Now, the key is for the Lakers to continue to build off this momentum and keep stacking victories down the stretch of the season.
Luka Doncic happy with Lakers’ purpose in comeback win
The Lakers were far from the best version of themselves against the Pelicans, but were able to stick with it and come away with the win. And Luka Doncic was proud of the resolve the team showed in coming back and getting the victory.
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