After the Lakers' potentially game-winning shot against Utah came up just short on Tuesday night, Nick Young found himself taking his anger out on the ball, spiking it to the floor.
“I was just frustrated,” Young said at Wednesday’s practice. “I just wanted to win the game. It’s a game we felt we should have had. We just didn’t pull it out. We’ve got to learn how to finish games better.”
Head coach Luke Walton put the team through a long film session on Wednesday, maintaining that the game wasn't only defined by its back-and-forth final minutes.
“That’s just one small segment of the game,” Walton said. “Obviously everyone always looks at the last minute of winning and losing, but I’m still pleased with the overall effort that we had and the way we competed on the defensive end.”
Walton was pleased with the aggressiveness that the Lakers showed on defense, even though they allowed the Jazz to shoot 50.7 percent from the field.
He also came away happy with the play of D'Angelo Russell, whose four points on 2-of-11 shooting may have been an eyesore to those who didn't look past the box score.
“I thought D’Angelo played really good last night, honestly,” Walton said. “I do. … Defensively, he was more active than he’s been. He was talking out switches. He was fighting offensively. He had more of a push to his game as far as trying to set the tone and pace that we wanted to play with.”
Walton isn't worried about his point guard's shooting, even though he has gone just 7-of-24 in his last two games.
Instead, he's satisfied with the way Russell is taking his attempts within the flow of the offense and thinks that it is simply a matter of shots not falling.
“If it was me missing like that, I’d be very worried about it,” Walton joked. “For someone that actually has some shooting touch like that, he’ll be fine.”