The Los Angeles Lakers began the 2023 NBA postseason on a high note, going on the road and comfortably beating the Memphis Grizzlies in Game 1 of the 2-7 Western Conference matchup.
Even though the Lakers are the No. 7 seed, they looked like the more prepared and experienced team, which isn’t exactly surprising considering they have NBA champions like LeBron James and Anthony Davis on their roster.
Outside of James and Davis though, the Lakers’ roster lacks postseason experience. Because of that, James and Davis revealed that they gave a speech to the team ahead of Game 1 so they knew what to expect.
LeBron went into more detail of what was said in that speech to get his team ready, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Listen, we’ve kind of been in desperation, playoff mode for like two months now because we just really didn’t have much room for error to lose games or whatever the case may be if we wanted to put ourselves in a position to play right now. But when the playoffs start, it’s even more dialed in and just understanding assignments, not making mistakes. We can’t have multiple possessions where we’re not running back on defense or we turn the ball over, and obviously me and AD had a majority of the turnovers tonight. But even when we turn the ball over, we got to get back and set our defense. But offensively and defensively, we just got to be as dialed in as we possibly can for 48 minutes and I think guys understood that assignment are were really good tonight. But I think we can be even better.”
Davis added that they wanted to make sure the young guys were ready for both the physical and mental aspects of playoff basketball, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“We just kind of told them that the playoffs are different. For us, we’ve been in playoff mode for two months. battling, but it’s different. Physicality increases, as we saw today. The mental aspect is a lot different, valuing possessions. Just things that we’ve learned throughout the course of our careers being in the playoffs. A lot of these guys have not been there so we just wanted to kind of harp on what it takes to kind of be in the playoffs and what it takes to win games in the playoffs, especially a road game. That’s all it was about. Obviously Game 1 is always a feel-out game just to see what teams are doing, both sides are doing. We see what they’re doing and they see what we’re doing. And just going out and playing hard and having fun and we’ll make adjustments accordingly. That’s kind of all we told them.”
Having guys like James and Davis who have been through a ton of postseason series’ will be extremely beneficial for a team that has a lot of young players and a rookie head coach. LeBron, especially, has been through and seen everything when it comes to postseason basketball over the last two decades so there’s no better resource for young players than him.
Davis believes role players will be key to title hopes
If the Lakers are gonna win a championship then both James and Davis will need to be healthy and at their best. The same can be said for the team’s role players though as Davis recently spoke on their importance to this postseason run.
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