Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - In Game 2, the Lakers Know They Need to Step Up and Play Physically

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everyone, welcome to Lockdown Lakers for Tuesday. Brian Komenesky, Andy Kaminoske, the Lakers talk about what went wrong, what they're going to do to fix it tonight in game two. That's next. You are locked on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked on Podcasts Network, your team every day. Thanks to everybody for making Locked on Lakers first listen to every day Monday through Friday,

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Starting point is 00:01:09 New customers can get $250 in bonus bets when your first $5 bet wins. So you were in El Segundo, Andy, at practice on Monday afternoon. And it is fair to say they understand the stakes of what's happening tonight. Yeah, it's pretty clear that everybody recognizes that not only did they play poorly in game one, but I think they all recognized how disappointing it is to play as badly as they did for the reasons that they did. Like it's one thing if you play as hard as you can, you seem dialed in, you seem like you're giving the game, the requisite urgency, and just the shots aren't falling or for whatever reason it's not working. These guys all seem to recognize, whether you're talking about JJ Redick talking with us, Austin Reeves, Dorian Finney Smith, who were made available to us. we can get in some of their comments, that a lot of what went wrong for the Lakers, and this gets back to LeBron, his postgame comments controlling the controllables, a lot of this was within the Lakers' own control, and they did not exercise control in the right proper, most urgent ways.

Starting point is 00:02:27 like the glass half empty version of that reality is why the bleep did you not do that in game one of the playoffs. The glass half full version of it is inexcusable, but we can fix it. These things are within our power. And everybody to a man sounded pretty determined not to let that happen in game two. Right. And of course, the danger is you, like you say, you can do the stuff right in game two and still lose the game. You know, you punted away a game not because the other team simply outperform you, but you just open the door to make it easy for them.

Starting point is 00:03:04 That's why generally speaking, NBA players and coaches don't recommend punting a game in the playoffs. Yeah, no. It was funny. Like, I did the squad show, the Locked-on Network Squad Show Western Conference and usual cast of characters from around the Western Conference playoff teams. And I was asked, like, do you chalk this up as to the sort of the, I mean, Luca has a little bit of history too of feeling out series in game one you might drop way in game one come back and win the rest you know of lebron you mentioned the record in game games one uh over

Starting point is 00:03:39 the course of his career and you know dropped a lot of them um and his record in series i think what'd you say like 41 and 14 something crazy like that yeah so my response to that was i think yes like you can look at it. Like there is that feeling out. They understand the length of a series and all that kind of stuff. But you don't, they don't, they don't go out and lose game one on purpose. LeBron has lost a lot of game ones over the course of his career. He's also won a lot of game ones. You know, like the record is still above 500. They weren't doing this on purpose. It's not, it's part of the strategic plan. And so there's a difference between feeling out a game because you're trying to get a feel for it and kind of like treating a game.

Starting point is 00:04:23 game like you're sliding into DMs really casually. Like they kind of tried to slide into game one and that that's just not how it works. We're not doing it that way. And it's, you know, I saw what did they score? How you do it. I saw some people, you know, talking about, I mean, only 95 points. They really did not score. Hey, it would have beat the rockets. It's you you you saw. Matchups are everything. It really are. You saw. awesome people talking about how like it seemed like by some of his reactions and we'll get to it, you know, focusing first and foremost on bringing the requisite amount of urgency saying in Redick said it wasn't, you know, the game plan wasn't really the problem. It was the execution of game plan.

Starting point is 00:05:09 Although he's putting the blame on the players and this and that. Look, we might find out in game too that there are some deep flaws in the game plan as well. But you can, you rewatched it. I rewatched it. You can see in those moments where they all. are putting out the urgency and the effort and they're cutting harder and they're setting better screens and they're getting into their offense quicker and moving with that sense of urgency and organization. Again, a word that Redick used a lot that we'll talk about over the course of today's show. You can see when they're doing it and you can see how that made a big difference. Well, it's not a coincidence.

Starting point is 00:05:49 In this case, I don't think he's thrown his players under the bus. The players put themselves in front of the bus and let it run over them. It's not a coincidence that outside of the first quarter when the Lakers finished 2821, and that was by far their most positive. And why? Why did they finish 2821? It was by far the most positive quarter of the team have. But what you were talking about in the second half of the game,

Starting point is 00:06:13 when you saw what it looked like when they were doing the right things, it's not a coincidence that a lot of those possessions, in those moments involved Jared Vanderbilt. Because Vando is typically one of the guys that whether he's playing well, whether he's off, whatever. And I thought Vando had a very good second half, a pretty subpar first half. But Vando is typically a guy that the one thing you can always count on from him is playing really hard, a lot of energy, a lot of physicality.

Starting point is 00:06:47 And it was striking that he, like everybody else, in the second quarter, didn't have it. So to your point, it can be very night and day. JJ said since at practice that since basically January, he thinks that this is a team that has largely played with a lot of physicality. Like they've been one of the more physical teams in the league. I agree as well. So again, I mean, I can't compare to the entire league on a nighttime basis, but they have played physically. And it was jarring, but like, why were they up 28, 21 after one? They, it was not because they were shooting the lights out where the Luca had a great first quarter,

Starting point is 00:07:28 but as a team, they weren't shooting the lights out. They weren't, you know, forcing turnovers and running up and down the Florida. It was all offensive rebounding and second chance points. That's why they were up and generating turnovers. Yes, in that, in that first quarter. And so, like, that's the. And all of that shifted in the second quarter, in, you know, those first like whatever, four or five minutes of the third when the Lakers really needed a good start to the third quarter.

Starting point is 00:07:59 And it was what, 11 to 2, I believe the run was coming out of the half for Dallas, or Dallas for Minnesota. It's frustrating to fans, I think, to have a loss like that and boil it down. to, well, the other team has tried harder because it almost feels like a cop out. It almost feels like you're not willing to acknowledge any shortcomings that you have. And like I said, we could find more shortcomings tonight in game two. But you can't even get to the shortcomings when you're playing at 85% of the pace or whatever and the urgency of the team that you're playing against.

Starting point is 00:08:42 And again, it's not just beating guys up and hammering them physically, although little bit of that would be good. It's how quickly are you getting into your offense? How quickly do you pick up the guy coming up the floor? Do you do it five feet higher up where you may probably were the coaching staff and the game plan is designed to do it? How hard do you set that back screen? How quickly? All of those things like they started too many possessions for all intents and purposes with 12 or 13 seconds already gone on the shot clock. You can't do that. You cannot do that a good defensive team. J.J. said that after practice today that, you know, he talked about like the idea of being more organized,

Starting point is 00:09:25 running more set plays, things like that. But he said, you know, it's not all just the idea of the point card calls the play. And then everybody gets on the same page from there. And like, everybody is keying in on the specific set that's being run. And that's really what it comes down to with being organized versus not organized. He said, like, there were many plays where you get to like 15 seconds and half the team or more is still at half court. And just like the idea of approaching it with a lack of urgency and that lack of urgency will lead to you being unorganized on offense because not everybody is actually just doing the things they're supposed to be doing.

Starting point is 00:10:07 We get back, before we move on to some of the things from Austin and DFS, There was something that JJ conceded during the post-practice media session today that I was wondering about and that I think was a mistake leading into it where if nothing else you can, if nothing else, it speaks to everybody taking stock of things that went wrong. So we'll get into that coming up next. Locked on Lakers is brought to you by Fandul. The NBA playoffs are here.

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Starting point is 00:12:26 And plus you help us win a contest internally to beat all the other hosts in this thing. That's really important. So you had one more thing you want to talk about, Andy. Yeah, I had mentioned, I want to say from Monday's show about how I'd been wondering if given this team's at times kind of collectively relaxed personality, like to be clear, I think for the most part, they are extremely focused in games. I think they treat them with the proper urgency, all of that stuff. That's how you end up with a three seed this year despite injuries,

Starting point is 00:13:01 roster turnover, all of that stuff. Like, I don't think that this is a team that doesn't take the season seriously. But I think they are not a team that has, at the top, especially, like the most intense personality collectively. And JJ said in retrospect that he thought maybe they should have done more organized scrimmages during the week. And I don't even know if it's a question of practicing harder because I know that they were doing stuff during the week, but more of the idea of recreating as close as possible the atmosphere of these games, whether you're talking about that sort of in-game intensity or whether you're talking about the drilling down on

Starting point is 00:13:48 details and just keeping yourself in that mindset of urgency physically and mentally. And I think it reflects a bit of what I had been thinking about, you know, in terms of what could explain the way they approached the game they did. And whether as much as this team, I'm sure, needed some rest and the ability to recharge. if it might have been what they needed and too long for its own. Every team is different. And hopefully the Lakers are in the situation again next year. There is a learning.

Starting point is 00:14:27 This is sort of where a little bit of that learning curve comes in. I was struck by a couple of things of practice. We can talk about them in any order that you want. Actually, a few things. Doreenie Smith referenced some of the things we were talking about how the lack of ball movement, the lack of player movement, all that kind of stuff sucks some of the energy out of, especially these supporting players who just didn't touch the ball very much over the course of the game.

Starting point is 00:14:56 That was one thing. JJ seeming to lean into what their preparation was and really fault some of the execution in terms of how things were done. And then Reeves asked how he, when he watched the tape, what did he see? His first reaction was, I played bleepie. Like, he really, you know, if anybody's out there is worried that Austin is unaware of how he played or blowing it off, he is not. So those are the three things that I think were big in practice in El Segundo on Monday. You know, dealer's choice.

Starting point is 00:15:32 You start where he want. I'll start when we left off with Austin because I actually actually. asked him that. JJ had gone before Austin, and I think Austin had also, like JJ, talked a bit about the film session that they had. And I asked Austin, just when you watched yourself during the film session, what are the things that either jumped out at you or you're thinking I could do a better job of?

Starting point is 00:15:57 And he just said, quote, I played bleepie. I wasn't myself. To what the reason was, I don't know. But I just got to go out there, be myself, play my game, and have fun doing it. He also said that this game was a wake-up call for both the team and presumably himself, just the idea of we cannot allow ourselves to lose games because we don't do the things that we're capable of doing.

Starting point is 00:16:24 If Minnesota outplays us, so be it. But he said that the wolves did not do anything particularly out of character in his mind. You know, he said that they are a team that always plays very hard. very physical, that they will guard you very well. You know, I doubt if you injected Austin with truth serum, he would said that he would have expected Jaden McDaniels to go 11 of 13, or that they would shoot 50%. And if you injected Jaden McDaniels with Truth serum,

Starting point is 00:16:52 he would have expected Jaden McDaniels to go 11 of 13. Probably not. But like, I think those aspects of the game, I'm sure he didn't expect. But at the same time, I'm sure he'd also acknowledged, we gave them too many easy looks. If you give players that are largely pretty good shooters, or at least, you know, competent shooters,

Starting point is 00:17:15 enough open looks and enough rhythm to hit those open looks, guess what? They're going to make a lot of them. Yeah, and it's also too. It's like this, something happens every playoff game. There's the, oh, I wasn't expecting that. Or this guy, this performance from that guy. And, you know, it was Jaden McDaniels in this game.

Starting point is 00:17:34 another night it's whoa you know you hope from the lakers it's wow i wasn't expecting 17 from doreen phiney smith or gave vincent hit three first half three pointers like there's always in every playoff game something that is different than sort of the typical scouting and execution that you're expecting going into it so like yeah nobody thinks jade mcdaniels can go 1113 again in this series probably again starting with jade mcdews but someone on Minnesota is going to do something goofy or a little out of character or step up and have a great game. Or, you know, wow, Julius Randall went one for 11 or Austin Reeves and LeBron scored 35 points between them. Like these things where somebody is way below what the expectation is, that's always going to happen.

Starting point is 00:18:22 So you have to be prepared for that sort of thing and be able to have enough going on that you can pick it up. Somebody else scores when a different guy isn't, whatever it might be. You know, I think in terms of the supporting cast, what DFS was talking about and sort of appreciate as candor about lack of touches and about lack of movement and the sort of stagnant nature of what the Lakers were doing and how that impacted them, you know, on both sides of the ball and the intensity that they had in that game, I think that is a note that you absolutely positively have to take seriously. because it's what we were seeing and it's natural human nature, even in a game that important. It's not even sulking. I don't even want to make it sound like it's sulking. It's not. I'm glad you brought that up because I want to get more into that piece of this because I saw a lot of reaction on Lakers, Twitter, two clips of DFS talking about this.

Starting point is 00:19:28 And I think people had a lot of wrong takeaway. So we'll get into that coming up next. Yeah, it's interesting, Andy, when you talk about the reaction to DFS and what he said at practice about, you know, allowing the lack of touches and the lack of, and that sort of lack of action to impact him, it is interesting. Like when you see how people react to that, I don't think they're getting, I don't, I think they miss the point. Yeah, I'll, I'll set the entire scene because I was there. And DFS was asked by Dave McMenneman from ESPN. You know, with Dave even acknowledging, you're not a guy that is necessarily counted on to be super prolific with the counting stats. But is there a way for you to be more involved?

Starting point is 00:20:24 Do you need to be like in terms of getting up more shots? And DFS said that first of all, he wasn't sure that this was going to be a series where he gets a ton of, of shots just because of the way Minnesota was guarding certain guys, not guarding certain guys. He noted that Rudy had been marking Rui, which is going to lead to Rui having more open opportunities because you know Rudy is only going to, Rudy Gobert is only going to step so far out there because that's not his comfort zone defensively. So DFS said, like, I may not be getting a lot of shots in this game. So I need to find other ways to affect the game.

Starting point is 00:21:05 And when he noted that his energy waned in some respects by only touching the ball so much and that that affected him on both sides of the ball, DFS was not complaining. DFS was not making excuses for himself. DFS was actually throwing himself under the bus and saying there's no excuse. for this, I need to do better. I can't allow a lack of touches to affect my energy. That's not excusable. And we can get into some of the reasons why this happening is kind of predictable,

Starting point is 00:21:46 even if it isn't excusable. But it should be made very clear. This was not Dorian agitating for more shots, if anybody's misinterpreting this. Yeah, and it's, I just, I also think it's like, has anybody out there played sports? I'm not talking about at the professional level. I'm just saying if you, when you play, there is an energy that comes when the ball, the puck, the, you know, whatever it is, whatever sport you're playing, where there, where things are moving, things are, you know, the ball is traveling around one person, one position, one position.

Starting point is 00:22:29 position, soccer, whatever it is, you know, one guy just sort of carry that. It keeps everybody's energy and intensity high because you know you never can let your guard down. You can never and you're always ready. You're always moving. You're always part of the thing that your team is doing. And one of the reasons that we talked about why Minnesota would want to try to get the Lakers to play in the way that they did on Saturday was because it lowers the energy

Starting point is 00:22:59 and the intensity of the entire group because definitionally, your move is to stand. And you're still invested. You're still playing hard. You're still really deeply. You care about the result of the game. But you're just not on that edge where everything is in that flow because you're just steps of the way.

Starting point is 00:23:20 Do I go? Do I stay? What do I do? And do I crash the glass or can I not? Like everything is just slower and out of a flow. and you're not involved. And that takes some of the energy out of the group. That is sports nature, if you want to call it human nature.

Starting point is 00:23:41 It's sports. Everything is true of most things. You're at work and you're sitting around the conference table and everybody gets talk but you. You know, you have ideas. It takes some of your energy away, even if you're trying to do the best thing by your company. So I respect DFS for saying it out loud. And I respect, I'm sure the Lakers will try to fix it,

Starting point is 00:24:02 but it's really incumbent on the entire team, not just him. Yeah. You know, there's that saying Mike Dantoni used to say it all the time. Steve Kerr says it all the time. I'm pretty sure JJ Redik has said it as well that, you know, the ball finds energy. Yes. And it's true, but the ball also creates energy as well.

Starting point is 00:24:19 And it's not just like you mentioned the human nature piece of this or the sports nature piece of this. It's legitimately feeling in rhythm. of the game. Like if you're somebody who is used to a requisite amount of touches, like a baseline amount of touches in the game, and you're not getting it, these guys are creatures of habit. They are programmed to be playing a certain way. Like you spend all these 82 games and whatever times you have to practice, shootarounds, all that stuff, to get everybody on the same page. So hopefully, even when going up against a defense, looking to stop you,

Starting point is 00:24:58 looking to throw wrenches in the way, you can still keep performing. Your amount of touches are part of that flow. And unless you're somebody like Vando or Jordan Goodwin, like really, you know I am only going to touch the ball, even like Goodwin as a point guard, very few amount of times. And like my job, like what I'm supposed to do out there, generally speaking, doesn't involve having the ball much in the first place. you are going to get thrown off by that in part because your job as it's being laid out for you in terms of what you've been told the team needs from you, you're not actually able to fulfill it.

Starting point is 00:25:40 So it doesn't excuse the idea that your energy could wane. And DFS said like, not cool. I have to do better. It's on me to do better. But it is not. I don't think it is as big of an indictment of DFS. FFS is I know some people will take it as a reality of, look, if you want this team to perform at its best, it needs to literally operate as a team.

Starting point is 00:26:09 What did you think of, you know, because I know JJ was asked a lot about, you know, the defense on Anthony Edwards and the open shots. And he essentially said, you know, our defensive game plan, you know, was fine. Like there was the execution of the game plan. Again, it was like a lot of things. I mean, not that there's stuff that they say, as he said, there's a lot that we need to do better. But, you know, my favorite thing about the playoffs is always, I mentioned this for Monday's show,

Starting point is 00:26:37 do you, is your adjustment, do what we're trying to do and do it better, do execute the game plan better, or has it changed the game plan? And in the aggregate, it seemed to me like JJ was leaning more towards execute the game plan better before we ditch it at the very least execute the game plan better i don't to be totally honest i don't know like i don't truly know how to answer the question i don't either because he was short on specifics about what i want j j i mean at one point j jay was asked something about you know adjustments even in the most broad sense and j j j said i'm not giving away our adjustments and typically j j j j is a i'm not going to go through the kabuki theater pretending i'm hiding sets hiding

Starting point is 00:27:19 pitches. Everybody knows what everyone runs anyway, but he was like, I'm not giving you even a shred of information. Nor should he, by the way. Right. As far as the offense goes, I think it's pretty easy to diagnose what they were not doing correctly because we know what it looks like when it's really working. The defense is what makes it difficult to figure out how much of that is the game plan not being executed properly versus maybe not the right game plan. And I say that because The Lakers have often made a point. It's funny, this is something that used to happen under Darvin Ham and would drive, I know me crazy and a lot of Laker fans crazy.

Starting point is 00:28:00 You know, the concept of there are certain shooters that you give them those shots. And, you know, you're picking your poison. And if those guys make the shots, you tip their cap, you tip your cap to them. Clearly, they went too far in this direction because Minnesota is, too good of a three-point shooting team to give that many guys that many open shots. Right. I was going to say under that little amount of stress. Right.

Starting point is 00:28:31 Like, if JJ Redick will forget in five minutes more about basketball than I'll ever know in my entire life combined. But if that was the game plan, I will just tell JJ, that's the wrong one. I don't suspect at minimum it was executed the way it was. was supposed to be. But I do think they need to be careful of even if, let's say, Jaden McDaniels or Julius Randall are the designated, those are the guys you give those shots to. Because between Ant and the other guys that we know are better three-point shooters, you have to pick your poison at someplace. They need to make sure at minimum that if, say, McDaniels or Randall make a couple of those

Starting point is 00:29:19 you got to do something to disrupt their rhythm. Like, you know, you need to run them off the line a couple times and then maybe see if they're out of a flow and you give them a couple of those looks again. Like what I do think they need just to make sure of is this is our game plan and we trust our game plan to the point where we don't tweak it at all or we don't. Yeah. And we don't involve the context of what's actually happening in this game. Right now and I don't mean to say they're not going to do anything different.

Starting point is 00:29:49 I just mean like you're not tearing up the game plan and saying, you know what, what we have here? Our plan isn't why you always tweak the recipe a little bit, you know, subs a little bit more of this, a little bit less of that. I think they will probably try to get more out of Jackson Hayes in this game than they did in game one. You know, for example, I think they will try to get a little more out of Ando in this game than they than they did in game one. I think you need to be able to kind of match both Minnesota's size, but also the fact that they do run out a pretty deep playoff, by playoff basketball standards run out a pretty deep rotation of guys who can come in and play useful basketball.

Starting point is 00:30:32 So, I mean, I think they'll tweak the recipe a little bit. I just mean in terms of total overhauls. And that's, I mean, I think as a coaching staff, that probably is the thing that's most annoying to them. about how the Lakers performed in game one is you don't learn enough when part of the problem with your team is you're just not matching the physicality. You're not matching the the energy and the effort and the the speed of the game. And certainly the speed, you know, all of those things with your opponent.

Starting point is 00:31:07 If you don't match that, it's really hard to gauge what's working and what isn't and why? Because did it not work because that screen, that action is going to be cut off based on what Minnesota is doing defensively? Or did it not work because you just didn't go hard enough? You went too late in the shot clock or the spacing. You need to be three feet higher on the floor so that that back screen can work as it's supposed to. If you're not executing those things properly, you don't learn the lessons from what's happening. And I think that from a coaching standpoint is probably the most irritating. thing. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in a lot of different ways, this felt like a wasted game one

Starting point is 00:31:49 as opposed to a game one that they just lost because there's a difference. And needless to say, they better win game two. Locked on Lickers on YouTube. I think they will. Locked on Lickers on YouTube is where you go hang out with, I'm going to call it 35,000 subscribers to the channel. We, of course, will be back with reaction right after the game. Make sure you are ready to go live. We certainly will have a live broadcast following the game tonight, Tuesday night. So we'll see everyone there.

Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - In Game 2, the Lakers Know They Need to Step Up and Play Physically

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