Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick made the decision to play only five players in the second half of Game 4 against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Dorian Finney-Smith replaced Jaxson Hayes as he, LeBron James, Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Rui Hachimura didn’t get a single break in the final 24 minutes.
Unfortunately, Redick’s gamble didn’t work as the Lakers fell to the Timberwolves and now return to Los Angeles down 3-1 in the series. While the series isn’t over, the odds of the Lakers pulling off a comeback aren’t great. But the most important thing for the team is to believe it can happen and this squad absolutely feels they can do it.
Finney-Smith spoke on this after the Game 4 loss, saying the Lakers still feel they can come out victorious in this series but must take it one game at a time. He also acknowledged that James has done this before, as seen on Spectrum SportsNet:
“Well I seen Bron do it already (laughs). But we still feel like we can win this series, we just gotta win one game at a time. Obviously we put ourselves in harm’s way, but we gotta figure it out as a team.”
Of course, Finney-Smith is referring to LeBron leading the Cleveland Cavaliers back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the Golden State Warriors in the 2016 NBA Finals. It will forever go down as one of the greatest series comebacks in all of sports and the Lakers would love to be able to replicate it against the Timberwolves.
The struggle for the Lakers has been their lack of size against this extremely physical Minnesota team. Finney-Smith has given everything he could to be a factor, but the team as a whole have been unable to keep the Timberwolves off the glass and it has cost them.
As Finney-Smith said, the Lakers have to take it one game at a time, and these two games in Minnesota have shown that they are capable of winning with just a couple of tweaks here and there. They are going to have to be locked in at another level in order to pull this off, but they feel it’s possible and now will have to show the world it is.
Lakers coach JJ Redick explains decision to play five players in second half of Game 4
The decision to play just five players the entire second half was certainly unexpected, but JJ Redick felt it is what gave the Lakers the best chance to win.
Redick explained the decision after the fact, saying that it wasn’t planned beforehand, but was a decision made at the half. The Lakers coach added he doesn’t regret the decision.
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