LOS Angeles Lakers do not feel concerned despite suffering a flattening 115-104 defeat at the hands of Miami Heat in Game 3 of their 2019-2020 National Basketball Association (NBA) Finals on Sunday night (Monday in the Philippines).
Lakers veteran LeBron James said the team just needs to make some adjustments heading into Game 4 on Tuesday after they turned the ball over 19 times the last time out.
“I don’t feel like we’re concerned,” said James. “We’re not concerned. We know we can play a lot better. We have another opportunity to take a commanding lead on Tuesday. You relish that opportunity.”
“You just can’t turn the ball over versus that team and I take full responsibility for that,” he added. “I’ll be a lot better with the security of the ball and the turnovers and we as a team will be a lot better defensively with our game plan.”
Los Angeles forward Anthony Davis, for his part, said he will make the necessary tweaking personally to avoid numerous turnovers and getting to foul trouble early, just like in Game 3 where he was held to just 15 points.
“It had an impact,” Davis said about the foul trouble. “So it takes away the aggressiveness on both ends of the floor that I’m used to playing with, and those guys like to take charges or whatever, and you know, try to draw offensive fouls.”
“Still got to be better and still got to find ways to affect the game on both ends of the floor, but it definitely took me out and put a little bit too much pressure on the other guys,” he added. “We’ve just got to be better overall. I mean, we’ll be fine.”
Meanwhile, Heat guard Jimmy Butler said after pulling off a stunning Game 3 victory, Miami got a lot of confidence as they will try to level their best-of-seven finals series to 2-2.
“We play this game to win. I’m glad my teammates got a lot of trust and faith in me to go out there and hoop like that. But like I always say, you guarantee me a win, I could care less,” said Butler, who tallied 40 points, 13 assists and 11 rebounds in their Game 3 win.
“This is a different time now, different group of guys around me. We’re not going to lay down. We’re going to fight back into this and get to 2-2,” he added./PN
