The Los Angeles Lakers have a tall task ahead of them, literally and figuratively, as they get set to match up with the Houston Rockets in the first round of the playoffs.
Houston is a big, physical team, so Lakers head coach JJ Redick laid out the two main keys for his team going into the series.
“Taking care of the basketball and boxing out. That’s the series,” Redick said after practice on Tuesday. “Scheme, personnel, obviously important. But if we don’t take care of the ball and don’t box out, we’re not gonna win the series. They’re number four in scoring opportunities, we were number 23. We don’t have the luxury with Luka and AR out of getting killed in scoring opportunities every single game. We gotta box out. We’re gonna place an emphasis on every drill in practice.
“We started practice with boxing out today. You gotta put it in their minds. That was literally the only thing we said about Houston today. Today was about us and having a practice and getting sharp with our stuff. Tomorrow we’ll introduce personnel, Thursday we’ll do our scout like we would, Friday will be a reinforcement of that scout and Saturday we’ll be good to go. The only thing we did today was box out and take care of the ball.”
The Rockets are one of the best offensive rebounding teams in NBA history, so that certainly needs to be a focus if the Lakers want to be competitive in this series, especially with both Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves still out.
Taking care of the ball could also be an issue for L.A. given their lack of ball-handlers and the athleticism the Rockets possess on the wing. That will mainly fall on LeBron James, Luke Kennard and Marcus Smart, but as Redick mentioned, it has to be an emphasis all series.
JJ Redick knows Lakers will face challenge against Rockets
Redick previously gave his initial thoughts on the series, praising the Rockets as a team that will be a legit challenge for the Lakers.
“Houston’s obviously a really good basketball team and we’re gonna prepare and we’re gonna fight and we’re gonna go try to win the series,” Redick said. “Going into today we told the team like it was; it’s not about the opponent, it’s about us. And now it is about the opponent. We’re gonna do everything we can to get our guys in a great frame of mind, great physical shape over the next four or five days and be ready to play.”
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