The Los Angeles Lakers picked up their best win of the season on Thursday night, dominating the Boston Celtics 117-96. LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Austin Reaves all had big nights, but it was a true team effort that allowed the Lakers to come away with the victory.
In terms of the main reason for the win, LeBron pointed towards the Lakers simply executing the gameplan laid out for them by JJ Redick and the coaching staff.
“We had a gameplan, and we executed,” James said after the game. “For the majority of 48 minutes, we executed, and we know it’s a great team, defending champions, great players, and they’re going to put you in situations that’s uncomfortable, which you have to be uncomfortable in order to compete.”
This has been something mentioned by Lakers players and coaches following losses earlier this season. Players have felt like the coaches are doing their jobs to prepare the Lakers for what to expect and what to do, but they just weren’t doing it. But against the rival Celtics, everything just seemed to click and LeBron made note of how good their communication was on the court.
“Communication was really good,” James responded when asked why the Lakers were so connected. “We knew we wanted to execute, especially defensively, and we executed that offensively. We didn’t turn the ball over, and they’re pretty good defensively as well. We didn’t turn the ball over. We didn’t force a lot of shots. We were, just we were good at all facets.”
A win like this would seem to give some hope to the idea that the Lakers really aren’t too far away from championship contention, but LeBron wasn’t ready to go that far. He reiterated the importance of remaining even-keeled throughout the season and noted that the Lakers have been up and down all year long.
Despite the impressive nature of the performance, LeBron isn’t reading too much into this victory and reiterated that he still feels the Lakers aren’t title contenders just yet.
“They sure don’t. I can tell your enthusiasm in your voice,” LeBron added. “I’ve heard that question way too many times in my career. Absolutely not. It’s one game. They’ve hoisted the Larry O’Brien Trophy. We’re trying to aspire to get there. We want to just continue to work on our habits and work on our game. So it absolutely does not.”
The Lakers continuing to focus on themselves and internal improvement is undoubtedly the right mindset to have as that is all they can control. James and Davis will continue to lead the way and hopefully the team will be able to build on this win and string together more performances like this one.
LeBron James already looking forward to Saturday showdown vs. Warriors
Even though LeBron James was happy with the overall performance, he also knows there is plenty of work to be done and with the Lakers’ next game coming against Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors he made it clear that this game means little when the ball goes up on Saturday night.
“Nothing. We won a game at home,” LeBron said when asked what the Lakers can take from this win when they head on the raod. “We protected home, but our gameplan will be different versus Steph [Curry] than it was versus this team. Versus Golden State, our gameplan will be different. So how we execute that will put us in a position to either win or lose and we have to play for 48 minutes. So you can’t use one game to the next game. Games are totally different.”
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