The Oklahoma City Thunder may have swept the Los Angeles Lakers out of the playoffs, but head coach Mark Daigneault made it clear afterward that the series was far from easy.
After Oklahoma City closed out the series in Game 4, Daigneault gave major credit to Los Angeles, JJ Redick and the Lakers coaching staff for forcing the Thunder to evolve during the series.
“The Lakers, congratulate them on a great season,” Daigneault said. “And obviously they played excellent tonight. But it’s been an impressive run they’ve had. With Luka Doncic out, with Austin Reaves out for part of that Houston series, they’ve been unbelievably resourceful.
“I have high respect for JJ Redick and their staff. And every series seems to teach your team lessons, and they throw a lot of pitches at us. I think we’re a better team at the end of the series than we were at the beginning, and that’s a credit to them. Just a tip of the hat to them. Deep respect.”
The Thunder entered the matchup as overwhelming favorites, but the Lakers’ constant defensive adjustments clearly created problems Oklahoma City had to solve on the fly.
“Yeah, I think the pitches of a lot of mixing defenses,” Daigneault explained. “That’s about as aggressively as we’ve been double-teamed out on the floor in a while.”
“Certainly, in a playoff series. It was similar to Denver playing that much zone in a playoff series a year ago. And it really had us having to sharpen our attacks, but I thought we did a great job of that. I thought tonight, down the stretch, we had some big-time plays [with] high-lows, traps and we had a dunk for Chet [Holmgren]. Made another one [with] the go-ahead basket for Chet. Ajay [Mitchell] had a wide-open three. That was a great attack, and I just thought we showed great execution of that.
“So, I think we’re a lot better in that area than we were coming into the series.”
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