The newly-acquired Dorian Finney-Smith and Shake Milton made their Los Angeles Lakers debuts on Tuesday night, although it came in a losing effort against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Lakers acquired Finney-Smith to bring some toughness on the wing and he flashed a little of that in his debut. In 20 minutes off the bench, Finney-Smith only had two points, two rebounds and two assists on 1-of-4 shooting but had a nice putback dunk and some quality defensive plays.
After the game, he discussed how it felt to put on the purple and gold for the first time.
“It was fun,” Finney-Smith said. “Energy was amazing… What I expected, the building was rocking. But we didn’t get the win, unfortunately they made some tough shots and we didn’t make enough.”
Having just gotten to L.A., Finney-Smith added that he still needs to get up to speed on all of the Lakers’ plays as he was just winging it for the most part.
“Just the play calls. I didn’t really know no plays at all,” he admitted. “Everybody was talking to me and helping me throughout the game and I was limited in minutes but just tried to have an immediate impact and do what Coach asked me to do, be me. Be a dog on defense, talk and bring energy. That’s all I tried to do. I got two open looks but like AD has been telling me, you’re gonna get more of those. I haven’t gotten some clean looks in a while so I got some clean ones.”
Until Finney-Smith is up to speed on the playbook, he will rely on his instincts while on the court for the Lakers.
“For sure. We’ve all been playing for a while so it doesn’t really take much for me to figure out what to do on the court because you’re looking for advantages and trying to play at closeouts. That’s what we did. I got some great looks, got some swing-swings and I barely knew the plays. But like I said, it’s basketball. You find the matchups you like and you attack it.”
The stats aren’t important when it comes to Finney-Smith as he does a lot of things that can’t be quantified in a box score. If he can make some open 3-pointers and defend at a high level then that would be a huge boost for the Lakers once he gets settled in.
Dorian Finney-Smith enjoyed playing in front of Lakers crowd
Playing for the Lakers at Crypto.com Arena for the first time was an enjoyable experience for Dorian Finney-Smith. He was part of a group that went on a run in the third quarter and got the crowd going, although he remembers one 3-pointer he missed that would’ve really made the fans go crazy.
“It felt good. I got a corner 3 too, I would’ve been popping shit if I would’ve made it. It didn’t go in but we still were on a run so it was fun,” Finney-Smith said. “Like I said, it got loud. I enjoyed it. I tried to ask Coach to play me more but he told me those were the minutes I got.”
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