The Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets are gearing up for their first round playoff matchup that begins this Saturday evening. Both teams have five full days off after avoiding the Play-In Tournament, giving head coaches JJ Redick and Ime Udoka the chance to deep dive into each other’s teams and play styles.
The Lakers and Rockets had an interesting season series. Houston crushed L.A. on Christmas Day, out-hustling and physically dominating the matchup. But the Lakers won each of the last two meetings by taking advantage of the Rockets’ poor crunch-time execution. Udoka — despite L.A.’s injuries — is keeping their two recent losses at the front of the mind for this series, via Clutch Fans:
“Yeah, I mean, starting with tonight or even 15 games ago, we wanted to focus on ourselves and playing the right way regardless of that. Obviously with seeding and how close it is, it was too tough to try and pick an opponent. For us, obviously it’s fresh that we lost two games to them recently and then kind of flipped the switch since then. Had a really good game against them on Christmas and obviously (we) know they’re injured, but quality players across the board. You saw that in the Minnesota game, they had guys out or whatever the case may be, but it’s still the NBA. They have some really great players there, so we’ll have our hands full.”
One of the ways that the Lakers were able to take advantage of the Rockets’ late-game vulnerability was by doubling Kevin Durant and forcing decisions by other players out of that. Udoka knows that strategy will be deployed again and believes in his team to figure out the antidote.
“Yeah I think we’re better at getting to our spacing and not turning the ball over. That’s where a majority of the problems came from was not even completing the pass out of them. But even before then we had seen it quite a few times and numbers show we’re really good against the double team, but they really hurt us in the fourth quarter at times, so it seems like it goes with it. If we pick it apart early, teams don’t do it as much. But when they have success with it, they do it more in the fourth. And that was a big part of the turnovers there, not making reads out of that. We’ve been up and down at times this year but had enough practice and seen enough that we know it’s something we’ll see again.”
Obviously, without Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves in the lineup, it’s unclear how potent L.A.’s offense will be in this series. The Rockets may not even need to win the double teams to have their way with the Lakers, but Udoka is not looking past his opponent regardless of their injury status.
Lakers’ Marcus Smart discusses guarding Kevin Durant
One of the most important matchups in this first round series is going to be what Marcus Smart is able to do against Durant on the defensive end. If he can prevent Durant from going completely nuclear, the Lakers may have a shot. Smart gave his honest assessment guarding a player like Durant.
“Brutal. It’s brutal, man. It’s brutal,” Smart said. “I mean, dude is one of the greatest to play this game and he moves like a guard with a big man’s body. It’s hard, it’s definitely tough. He’s gonna make it tough for us and we’re gonna make it tough for him.”
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