There will be no return trip to Salt Lake City.
D-Fish scored nine points, most of them with clutch free throws in the fourth quarter, to help stem the tide of a furious Jazz run as the Lakers held off Utah for a 107-96 victory.
The win ends the series in a four games to one victory for LA.
Derek talked to reporters about the scare, quoted from video provided by Andrew and Brian Kamenetzky at the LA Times Lakers Blog:
“We get complacent,” Derek said of the near letdown. “The activity and the intensity that we play with on the defense end to build that type of lead, we start to let slide and we focus more on scoring points and not playing defense. Those things can’t happen. We fell short last year and we had opportunities and we let them get away in similar situations where we had leads and allowed teams to come back and win. I’m not going to let that happen to this team again in the postseason.”
Fish did his part in the fourth quarter by entering as the lead shrunk, playing tight defense and sinking free throws in multiple trips to the line.
Talking about shrinking leads and closing out teams, Derek knows the team has some work to do and believes it will be done.
“This series is over and we’ll address the things that need to be addressed going forward,” he said. “It won’t happen going forward, because I said so…There are some things that we fail to do when we get into those situations and it has to stop. And it will. I just think collectively, as a team, we already know what we want to do. We know what our goal is. Everybody in the locker knows what it is and in order to achieve it, there’s a certain way we need to do things. We’ve taken a step towards it, but we have to do better, we have to play better, we have to play harder and we will.”
NEXT UP
The Lakers await their next opponent, the winner of the ongoing series between Houston and Portland.
The Rockets lead the series three games to one and the Lakers have won all four games against Houston this season. The Trail Blazers, on the other hand have owned the Lakers at their home in Portland for years now.
Still Derek says it doesn’t matter who wins. Either team is just another obstacle:
“It doesn’t matter at all,” Fish said. “Either is a physical team. They play good, tough, half court defense. They execute offensively. Both teams present certain matchups that create problems for us but any team that we face, they’re in our way on the way to where we’re trying to go. So it doesn’t matter who it is.”
RELATED STORIES
Jazz at Lakers Box Score (NBA.com, April 28, 2009)
http://www.nba.com/games/20090427/UTALAL/boxscore.html
Music to their ears: Lakers eliminate Jazz from NBA playoffs (LA Daily News, April 28, 2009)
http://www.dailynews.com/ci_12242256?source=rss
Second round, second guessing? (LA Times Lakers Blog, April 28, 2009)
http://lakersblog.latimes.com/lakersblog/2009/04/sasha-vujacic-beyond-more-playing-time-for-josh-powell-and-extra-work-for-kobe-and-lo-at-the-three-if-theres-fallout-from.html
Lakers make it nervous time again (LA Times, April 28, 2009)
http://www.latimes.com/sports/basketball/nba/lakers/la-sp-lakers-jazz28-2009apr28,0,2845706.story?track=rss