Obviously the star of the Los Angeles Lakers’ win over the Orlando Magic was Austin Reaves, but the rest of the bench unit was crucial to the victory as well. Dennis Schroder, Rui Hachimura and Wenyen Gabriel all made big contributions on both ends of the court to help the team come out on top.
The impact was felt immediately as the starters found themselves down by nine points early before the reserves came in and turned things around with their energy and effort. And this wasn’t an accident as Hachimura revealed that Schroder implored the bench unit to bring the energy upon them entering the game.
“Yeah, especially today, the first like five or six minutes we had a slow start, so we had to bring the energy,” Hachimura said after the win. “Dennis was telling us to bring the energy when we came off the bench so I think we did a good job, especially on the offensive side. We were sharing the ball, the second unit, and it was a good night for sure.”
Hachimura finished with eight points and five rebounds while also spending time defending Orlando’s talented young forward duo in Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner, who combined to shoot just 41.8% from the field. While Hachimura’s numbers may not stand out too much, the young forward was focused on being aggressive and working in tandem with his teammates.
“I was just trying to be aggressive on both sides, defensively and offensively,” Hachimura added. “We were in a good flow and even LeBron was telling Austin to do the two-man game with me and him so that was a stretch where I was in a good rhythm too so I was just trying to be aggressive.”
Hachimura’s ability to get his own basket in isolation is absolutely crucial with LeBron James being out and he certainly had some big buckets for the Lakers to keep Orlando at bay. This win put the Lakers back in the Play-In Tournament for the time being, but this squad knows that every game matters.
“Yeah, every game, literally every day our rankings change,” Hachimura noted. “But as Coach says, we just got to play every game. Each game, we got to focus on each game, one game at a time. So I think that’s what we’ve been doing and we got this win so now we got to get the next one.”
With just 10 games remaining, the Lakers still have an opportunity to secure themselves better postseason positioning, but they will need to be at their best to ensure they ultimately find themselves in the playoffs.
Darvin Ham says Lakers anticipate LeBron James returning this season
Something that would certainly help the Lakers in this push is having James back on the court and to that point, head coach Darvin Ham believes that will happen. “Yeah, we anticipate him coming back at some point,” Ham said prior to the game.
But Ham also believes his absence has revealed that this Lakers roster is a talented one.
“LeBron being out has revealed that we have a lot of different weapons that are very capable players on different sides of the ball that can help us achieve the goal that we’re trying to achieve and when he comes back, he’s just gonna add to it. But guys just got to play. We got to stay together and like I’ve been saying all year, we just got to continuously compete, stay together and hold ourselves accountable.”
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