The Los Angeles Lakers and Oklahoma City Thunder will face off in the Western Conference Semifinals, with Game 1 taking place Tuesday evening. The Lakers are massive underdogs, as head coach JJ Redick is still without Luka Doncic, the Thunder are the best team in the NBA and they thoroughly handled L.A. in their four regular season meetings.
Redick, though, isn’t going to coach as if the series is a lost hope. He believes the Lakers can win, and has been hard at work figuring out what advantages they can create or stifle from the Thunder. Redick believes a key to this series will fall on him trying to mitigate Oklahoma City’s extended runs.
“Well we couldn’t learn a lot from three of those games because we were god awful,” Redick said of the four regular season matchups. “I think bigger picture, just a general thing with them is they’re really good at runs. Part of that is how good their defense is, their ability to create turnovers, the live-ball turnovers really kill you. They don’t get out in transition a ton, but when they do they’re the best in the NBA in terms of [points per possession].
“Limiting their runs, I know Rick Carlisle is like the master of that, the quick timeout. I’ve already told my players and my staff like I’ve gotta be more diligent than I normally am. I like my timeouts, I like going into the fourth quarter with four timeouts, I like having two in the last 30 seconds.
“I don’t think you have the luxury of worrying about that, because the game can get away from you so quick because of how explosive they are when they go on their runs. And they do that to everybody. They did it to Phoenix in the first round, they did it to us in the regular season. Even in their losses they had, on average, 8.3 scoring runs. It’s what they do, and so mitigating the 12-15 point runs is really important.”
The Thunder are the type of team that can end a game in the blink of an eye. They are capable of stringing together a handful of stops in a row, converting each of them into easy buckets and turning a five-point lead into 15 in a matter of minutes.
The Lakers won’t be able to stop all of them, but if Redick can be quick to call timeouts and the Lakers can limit their turnovers, they should be able to keep games close enough that crunch-time execution will matter.
If there is any area where L.A. might have an advantage over the Thunder, it’s late-game execution. Avoiding long runs will give the Lakers a chance to flex that muscle.
Marcus Smart calls Shai Gilgeous-Alexander toughest player to defend
Lakers guard Marcus Smart, the team’s defensive leader, gave Thunder MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander his props when talking about the hardest players to defend in the league.
“Number one,” he said of Gilgeous-Alexander after practice on Monday. “I think we all know that. He does a really good job of getting to the free throw line and he’s mastered it. That’s gonna be a challenge for me.
“Not just me, but everybody on this team, just making sure we stay out of foul trouble and keep him off the line as much as possible. And then just continue to show your hands. It’s tough, but it can be done. It’s just gonna take a lot of effort from everybody and we gotta stay together.”
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