Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick said on May 6 that his team made too many mistakes during their Game 1 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second round of the playoffs. The Lakers were defeated 108-90 and now trail the series 1-0.
The importance of minimizing errors was highlighted by Redick, who explained that playing against a strong opponent like the Thunder leaves little room for mistakes. He said, “I don’t think there was a turning point. I think it was a general theme throughout the night of when we made game plan mistakes, they hurt us. I thought the Houston Game 5 was the most game plan mistakes we made in a playoff game so far, we obviously lost that game.”
Redick also addressed specific issues on both ends of the court but emphasized defensive lapses as especially costly. “Primarily defensive,” Redick added. “There were some things we did offensively that weren’t necessarily what we talked about and sometimes ran a set and didn’t do what we were supposed to do, but that always is gonna happen. I think the gameplan defensively, whether it was a coverage thing or Shai coverage, it just seemed like every time we didn’t execute, they hurt us.” He continued: “They other part of that was when they did get an offensive rebound, they absolutely killed us. We didn’t do a good job of building back out on the offensive rebound.”
Despite these challenges, Redick found positives in his team’s performance and expressed optimism about improving execution for future games: “But there was some good things. We won expected score, held Shai under 20, he ended up with seven turnovers. Guys played hard, we just gotta do a better job with execution. It comes down to just the attention to detail on that and I know we’ll clean things up and be better.”
The Lakers also faced an injury setback as forward Jarred Vanderbilt suffered a full dislocation of his right pinky finger during Game 1.
Looking ahead to Game 2 against Oklahoma City, Redick stressed focusing on defensive improvements while maintaining confidence in his team’s ability to generate quality scoring opportunities.
