When Dennis Schroder knocked down a corner 3-pointer with just 1.4 seconds left, it looked as if the Los Angeles Lakers had punched their ticket to the playoffs. But on the final play of regulation against the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Play-In Tournament, Mike Conley would get open and Anthony Davis would foul him on a 3-point attempt with just 0.1 seconds remaining.
Conley would calmly sink all three free throws to send the game to overtime, but the Lakers were able to put that behind them and finally put away from the Timberwolves in the extra period. Davis’ mistake thankfully didn’t cost the Lakers in the end and the big man explained exactly what happened on that last play.
“KAT was setting a flare screen … I told Bron I didn’t honor the call. I told him to switch, but I don’t think he heard me and I didn’t want KAT to kind of like slip in front of his face,” Davis explained. “But I got to know who also I’m playing with. Like, I’m talking to Bron like he knows. And then Mike [Conley Jr.] caught it like deep corner and was going out of bounds. I actually jumped to not foul him, but he kind of went with me, and got a foul.
“After it happened, me and Bron discussed, we watched it obviously I told him my bad. I told the team, you know, my fault. And it just goes back to our next-play mentality that Coach [Darvin Ham] always talks about, and we talked about as a team to whatever happened happened. Go and finish this last five minutes and get a win and that’s kind of what we did. Didn’t worry about it. And you know, I’m always the first one to own up to my mistakes. I think the biggest thing that was kind of just messed up Dennis’ game-winner. He got on me about that, but it always sucks when you lose. So it don’t kind of hurt as bad.”
Davis is right in that he has always owned up to his mistakes when they occur. The problem many have is that they continually occurred in crunch time this season. Whether it is missed free throws or bad fouls down the stretch, Davis has had some unfortunate moments for the Lakers this year and that simply can not happen in the playoffs.
Communication is important and Davis and LeBron failed on that play. It says a lot about the Lakers that they didn’t fall apart when that happened and were still able to finish out the game right. And Schroder has every reason to continue to get on Davis for ruining what would have been probably the biggest moment of his career.
Anthony Davis says Lakers’ main focus was winning so they could get rest
With that win, the Lakers are now locked into the seventh seed in the West and will take on the Memphis Grizzlies on Sunday. And having that four days off before taking the floor again was a big motivating factor for the team on Tuesday night.
“That was our main focus,” Davis said about getting that rest. “Even when we were down I think 15 or 17 or something like that. We just kept saying we got to get aggressive, we can’t play I thought it was Thursday, or Friday, or whatever day it is we didn’t want to play whatever day it was. We wanted to get this rest. Let our bodies heal and recover.
“I mean, we’ve been going at it in playoff mode, since the All-Star break trying to get in. So it’s good to have four days to kind of just recover and that our bodies heal, get some mental prep on Memphis, and go in kind of fresh on Sunday.”
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