The Los Angeles Lakers are heading into a first-round playoff matchup with the Houston Rockets knowing exactly what’s at stake, and according to head coach JJ Redick, the formula for success couldn’t be clearer.
“Taking care of the basketball and boxing out. That’s the series,” Redick said after practice. “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.”
Redick has already acknowledged the challenge Houston presents, making it clear this won’t be a straightforward matchup.
“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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