OKLAHOMA CITY — The Lakers punched first, butthe Thunder punched harderin their Game 1 victory on Tuesday to kick off the best-of-seven second-round playoff series.
Now, it’s on the Lakers to respond with a better counterpunch inThursday’s Game 2 at Paycom Centerto avoid falling behind by two games before the series shifts to LA for Game 3 on Saturday and Game 4 on Monday.
“Obviously, it’s playoffs at the end of the day, so, I mean, even though it’s not necessarily win or go home, it leads to win or going home,” Jaxson Hayes said. “So, I mean, we gotta just come in as the more desperate team and with more urgency and just locked in and just ready to go.”
Here are three adjustments the Lakers need to make for Game 2:
It goes without saying that the Thunder are deploying different defensive strategies withLuka Doncic not availablefor the Lakers.
The Lakers are seeing less hedging/aggressive pick-and-roll defenses from the Thunder, who used more drop coverages and switching in Game 1 compared to the regular-season games Doncic played in.
And they have to be better at attacking the Thunder’s strategies.
They struggled against the Thunder’s drop coverage for most of Game 1 — which has been a season-long Lakers’ weakness regardless of opponent.
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And the things that worked — post-ups and inverted pick and rolls — weren’t used frequently enough as the game progressed.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
