The Los Angeles Lakers hope to be playing their best basketball when the playoffs begin next weekend.
So after a one-point 86-85 loss to the Utah Jazz last night, in which they admittedly did not play their best, Derek Fisher looked critically at the performance.
"We just really failed in our execution offensively," he said. "That allows a team to take advantage of you in transition before you get back and set. It’s bad floor balance, those type of things. As much as we focus on defense, when you hold a team to 86 points, you hope to win that game."
Although he scored six points on just four shots in the loss to Utah, Fish was upset with himself too. He dwelled on three missed free throws that occurred in the first and third quarter, shots that No. 2 felt could have swung the game. Derek said plays like that usually get lost in the mix when outsiders look at the game, but he couldn’t let them go that easily.
"You remember certain plays, certain shots, certain things that happen at the end of the fourth quarter, but you forget about those first quarter possessions where you miss a free throw, or you turn the basketball over or you miss a layup. You forget about the things that impact the game as it unfolds. My free throw shooting could have helped us get over the hump in a one-point loss."
The loss also pushed the Lakers to the brink of being locked out of the race for the No. 1 seed and homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs.
They sit 3.5 games behind the San Antonio Spurs with five to play. But Derek reiterated that he is not worried about that. He just wants to see the Lakers playing the best basketball that they can play as the postseason approaches. That’s all they can do at this point, he told the LA Times:
"We’re definitely not helping ourselves in that regard," Fish said of homecourt. "But like we’ve been doing, which allowed us to have the success we’ve been having the last couple of months, is we mainly focused on ourselves. We haven’t spent a lot of time about other people’s performances and what their record is and whatnot.
"Regardless of how we finish these last five or six games, and if we have homecourt or not, the reality of it is, we have to play the type of basketball we’re capable of playing to beat the best teams. Obviously, homecourt by losing to Denver on Sunday and losing to Utah on Sunday. You can have homecourt against San Antonio, Chicago, Dallas, Miami and Boston. Obviously, if we can’t beat teams on our homecourt, it’s irrelevant. We just have to play better."
As a veteran with a lot of winning under his belt, Fish has all-important perspective and he made sure to note that the Tuesday night performance was not reflective of the Lakers as a whole. When a reporter asked after the loss what the Lakers need to do to "turn it around," Fish said that "it" wasn’t turned the wrong way to begin with.
"I don’t think turn it around
[is right]," he said. "I think you are putting too much on it to say turn it around. You have to keep in perspective what we’ve accomplished over the last six or eight weeks. It’s not so much as turning it around, but just getting back to finding ways to be efficient on the offensive end."Fish said that inefficiency was what let the Lakers down on Tuesday, when they scored their lowest point total since mid-February. They finished with 19 turnovers and have totaled 39 over their last two defeats:
"That speaks to the inefficiency offensively in terms of decision making and spacing and making sure that we’re operating in a way that allows for all five of our guys to be effective," he said. "We obviously are always making the focus to get the ball inside, but sometimes we even force that too much instead of moving the ball and swinging it to the open guy."
Forcing a play, or forcing the ball to a player, Derek said, is when turnovers come into play.
"It just comes down to decision-making. It’s that simple. We’ve made poor decisions in the last couple of games that led to some bad turnovers," he said. "We just have to get back to keeping that ball moving. It’s keeping the defense honest, making sure they’re having to guard all five guys. Then we’ll be able to get some of those easier baskets that we need to win a game."
NEXT UP
The Lakers get an immediate opportunity to atone when they head to NoCal tonight to take on the Golden State Warriors."We’ll be back at it tomorrow. That’s the reality of this business," Derek said. "Nothing helps you feel better than getting a road win. Hopefully we can do that."
In three Laker wins this year against Golden State, Fish is averaging eight points a game and over four assists.
Tonight’s tip-off is scheduled for 7:30 PST on ESPN.
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