On Saturday night, the Los Angeles Lakers were taking on the Sacramento Kings for the third time in little over a week. However, L.A. needed a player like Rui Hachimura to step up with LeBron James being sidelined due to illness.
Thankfully, Hachimura did exactly that by putting up 21 points on 7-for-11 from the field and 4-for-5 from 3-point range. Seeing how Sacramento came into Crypto.com Arena with renewed energy following head coach Mike Brown’s firing, it could have spelled disaster for the Lakers.
Despite handling the Kings in the previous three meetings, Sacramento is a good offensive team despite their defensive woes. Hachimura acknowledged the Lakers were fired up too and wanted to right their wrongs from getting swept last season and we able to do so by playing together.
“Yeah, we were fired up too, especially thinking about last year when we got blown up and lost like five or six games against them throughout the season,” he said. “So yeah, it’s payback. We had to show we got better, we’re more together now and our chemistry is way better than last year. It’s progress and I think we showed that.”
Each season presents new challenges and L.A. has a new head coach in JJ Redick that is putting players in different roles. With the more time they have spent together though, Hachimura believes their trust has grown.
“Yeah, we’re just more comfortable with each other,” Hachimura said. “We trust each other more, especially since we got new coaches. We’re still missing a couple of guys from last year so we’re still building it, but I think it’s more so that when we started and where we came from, we just started trusting each other more. That’s the No. 1 key. Basketball is a team sport, we have to play for each other. I think that’s the No. 1 think that we’ve progressed in.”
For the most part, Redick has his team handling business against lesser opponents and that is only going to help them when it comes to seeding.
It is refreshing to see Hachimura and the Lakers did not forget about what happened with Sacramento last season but also goes to show how quickly things change for teams at any given time.
LeBron James commends Rui Hachimura for doing little things
Coming into the 2024-25 season, head coach JJ Redick needed players to embrace new duties to accommodate for what their personnel is lacking. A noticeable player who is doing the little things is Rui Hachimura, which LeBron James commended him for in the absence of Jarred Vanderbilt.
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