On the road in the playoffs, you’re looking to give yourself an opportunity to win.
 Driving the lane (Getty Images). |
As Derek said after the Los Angeles Lakers’ 88-86 loss to the Utah Jazz Thursday night, the game was right there to be won.
“We gave ourselves a chance to win the game and on the road that’s what you want to do. We did that tonight, but we couldn’t get stops down the stretch and that proved to hurt us…On that last play against Williams we just didn’t lock in and know what we wanted to do on that play. He was able to get away, back to his right and get a basket.”
Derek scored seven points on 3-8 shooting in 37 minutes and 54 seconds, his longest stretch of playing time since February 5 win over Boston.
The Utah victory cut the Lakers lead to 2-1 in the Western Conference’s opening round.
TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY
The game played out as a direct reversal from the two games in LA. At Staples, the Lakers were the team that jumped out to a big lead and lulled in the middle, only to show their mettle and pull it out at the end.
In Utah, the Jazz jumped out to the early lead only to have the Lakers come back on them.
Though the Lakers started the game sluggishly, Fish led it off well, swishing the first three he attempted. Jazz had taken the momentum with an early 6-2 lead, but the Lakers created an opening for Fish with ball movement from Kobe Bryant to Trevor Ariza, leaving D-Fish wide open on the left wing. Ariza kicked it out to Fish who drained the triple to make it 6-5.
He tacked on two more points late in the period on a runner in the lane that stopped a 12-0 run by Utah to make it 19-12. Still the rest of the team was unable to get going and LA trailed 26-17 after one. No. 2 talked about the lack of execution in postgame:
“We’re still not executing offensively as efficiently as we need to,” D-Fish said. “The ball is not moving the way it needs to. That’s allowing defenses to kind of load up on us and then when they get a stop, get out in transition and score. We have to make teams pay more on the defensive end.”
THIRD QUARTER RALLY GOES FOR NAUGHT
By halftime the Lakers had cut the Utah lead to just four and a 15-2 run to start the second half put them up nine in a blink of an eye. The lead went as high as 13 when Derek dished to Ariza for a long-range bomb that seemed to be the nail in the coffin.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
“We didn’t expect it to be easy. Being the best is not easy,” Derek said after the loss. “There’s nothing about ‘oh my gosh, what do we do?’ because we’ve lost a game. This is a part of winning a championship. You don’t turn away when things get difficult. You keep going forward and looking adversity right in the face. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll make some adjustments tomorrow, come back and give it an opportunity on Saturday night.
NEXT UP
The Lakers and the Jazz renew the series with Game 4 on Saturday night in Utah. The pivotal game, which decides whether the Lakers go home up 3-1 or the series returns to LA all square, tips off at 6 p.m. PST and all the action can be seen live, nationwide on ESPN.
D-Fish was asked after the game to itemize a few things the team needs to do to win Game 4:
- "Secure more defensive rebounds. To hold them to low 40’s in shooting percentage on their home floor is not bad, but we still gave up too many second chance opportunities. I think that’s a good place to start."
- ‘Control the things we can control, that’s making free throws, that’s talking and communicating on defense and taking advantage of scoring opportunities when they’re there."
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