Austin Reaves and the Los Angeles Lakers find themselves with their backs against the wall, down 3-0 to the Oklahoma City Thunder. Frankly, Oklahoma City is the better team and is showing the gap between the two, especially in the second half of these games.
Obviously, no team has ever come back from this deficit, but it does not mean that the Lakers cannot compete. That is the messaging Reaves spoke about as they prepare for Game 4 on Monday to try and extend their season.
“You come and compete,” The Lakers guard said after the Game 3 loss. “There’s a bunch of guys in this locker room that are competitors and basically the message in the locker room after the game was we’re gonna come in here Monday and we’re gonna get a win. Obviously this situation sucks, but that doesn’t give us the license to quit. We got to come in here and compete. We owe the organization that, we owe each other that, we owe our fans that. So we’re gonna come here Monday and play as hard as we can.”
The Arkansas native is presumably not 100% healthy after returning early from a Grade 2 left oblique strain, but he is trying to put his team in a position to win. Oklahoma City historically makes it tough for Reaves to get going offensively by playing physical defense and by making him work on defense by attacking him with their on-ball creators.
If the Lakers want to get a win and avoid getting swept, Reaves and LeBron James need to set the tone as leaders. The Thunder are going to want to end this series on Monday, so that they can get extended rest to prepare for the Western Conference Finals.
Despite being down 3-0, head coach JJ Redick has his team competing as they led at the half in both Games 2 and 3. In Game 4, they need to find a way to prevent the second-half collapse from happening and it starts with protecting the ball.
Austin Reaves stresses need to limit turnovers against Thunder
Even before this series, the Thunder had their way with the Lakers in the regular season. Oklahoma City turned them over at a high rate, which resulted in lopsided results.
Los Angeles continues to struggle with limiting their turnovers and perhaps missing Luka Doncic plays a role in that. However, Reaves stressed that they need to prevent the Thunder from turning them over and that messaging holds ahead of Monday’s Game 4.
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