It was truly a team effort that led to the Los Angeles Lakers picking up a 21-point lead over the Boston Celtics on Thursday night. LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Austin Reeves led the way, but the Lakers also got big contributions from role players with one of the biggest in Gabe Vincent.
Vincent knocked down four 3-pointers to finish with a 12-point, four-assist night. Vincent has a lot of history with the Celtics from his time with the Miami Heat where he faced them twice in the Eastern Conference Finals and after this game, the guard admitted that it’s always good to take them down.
“They’re a very good team. They’re well-coached,” Vincent said. “It’s great to go out there and compete against them. Naturally, with the games I had against them, I’m not the biggest Celtics fan, per se. So it’s always good to win against them.”
When the Heat defeat the Celtics in 2023, Vincent was huge, averaging 15.8 points and shooting 51.6% from 3-point range in the seven-game series. Even though he doesn’t care about them personally, Vincent still respects them as a team as he does the Lakers as a whole, which is why HR believes the team came out too aggressive on Thursday night.
“I think it’s just our level of respect for them as opponents,” Vincent added. “They’re the defending champions, they’re a great team. If you don’t come out with that intensity and that energy, they can blow down the walls. We did what we had to do tonight, we did our job.”
It should be noted that the Lakers on this night had their defense as they held the high-energy Celtics offense to just 96 points on 38.5% shooting from the field. And like JJ Redick and James, Vincent pointed to the Lakers sticking to their game.
“We just asked in Gameplan,” the point guard noted. “We had a great game to try to make things difficult for them. Our energy, our effort, we rebounded the ball really well in the first half especially. We put ourselves in a great position to win the game. We stayed true to the process. They made runs here and there, but we stayed true to our plays and balanced things for for us. “
Vincent is finally starting to resemble the player the Lakers envisioned when they signed him in free agency a summer ago. And any time a player can help the Lakers take down the Celtics the way Vincent did, it will be greatly appreciated.
JJ Redick praises Lakers for implementing defensive Gameplan
As Gabe Vincent talked about, the Lakers did an excellent job executing their play-calling against the Celtics and coach JJ Redick felt it was the team’s best performance of the season.
“I thought this was one of our games, if not our best, in terms of executing our defensive plays,” Redick said after the win. “Don’t overreact [Kristaps] Porzingis has made some transition players. Like I said pregame, you have to be willing to live with things. Because of the way we wanted to protect them, it also required a lot of the ball in terms of staying in front and forcing drop players. It requires a lot of our shifts. It took a lot for the low man to stay out of the blender.
“We started the game in some whites and some face-offs in the post. We went away from that because a couple of times they made us run away. Outside of those couple plays early, I thought we were in front of the ball and making them score on top. That was what we wanted to do. It’s a credit to my staff, for sure, as We talked through things over the last 24 hours and it’s a credit to our guys to execute at a high level.”
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