Lakers coach JJ Redick, talking to reserve guard Gabe Vincent, on the upcoming stretch of games leading into the postseason: “Our guys recognize we’re in a dogfight for playoff seeding right now.” (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
Laker players looked around the meeting room Saturday morning, double-checking with one another to make sure that what they thought they just heard was what JJ Redick actually said.
Did he, the Lakers coach, clearly amped up for their game with Denver later that night, tell his players to go to war and to be “willing to die on the court?”
He sure did.
“We said, ‘We’re going to war’ that night,” forward Rui Hachimura said.
After the Lakers beat Denver 123-100 in one of their best wins of the season, the admittedly “amped” Redick was still preaching intensity.
“If we play that hard for the rest of the regular season, we’re going to be just fine,” Redick told his team postgame. “That should build your belief. It built my belief in what we can accomplish.”
The challenge, of course, is that the NBA schedule doesn’t always provide big games like this one, the Lakers facing a team that knocked them out of the playoffs the last two seasons.
Read more: Luka Doncic looks like Luka in Lakers’ win in Denver
Luckily for the Lakers, there aren’t too many lulls heading their way.
The team begins a stretch of big games Tuesday by hosting the Dallas Mavericks, the first meeting between the two franchises since the Lakers acquired Luka Doncic in a shocking trade.
Coming off his best game as a Laker, the expectation is that Doncic and the team will again summon extra energy for the Mavericks.
“I think he’s going to be excited, but everybody in the locker room is excited,” Dorian Finney-Smith said of Doncic. “We got his back. It’s gonna be a hard-fought game.”
The Lakers host Minnesota, the Clippers twice, New Orleans and New York following Tuesday’s game during a six-game homestand that will basically lead the team into the regular season’s final month. Since an 0-2 Texas trip in early January, the Lakers have been exceptional in big games, with just one of their four…
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