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LUKE WALTON, LAKERS HEAD COACH
Opening statement:
“I would love to thank our players. With all the expectations on us this year to do great things, and to fall short and to continue to play as hard as they did until the very end of the season, beating two playoff teams, taking another one down to the wire tonight. It just means the world to me as a coach that they’re continuing to fight and not give up and play that hard. It’s beautiful. I want to thank our players and thank my coaching staff as well. It’s been a challenging season, but they’ve continued to, with all the noise as well, show up and work and try to do their jobs to the best of their ability and get players better, get our team prepped and whatnot. I’d love to thank them. Tonight, again, I thought our guys did it. They brought the energy. They gave themselves a chance to win. You get the ball out of [Damian] Lillard’s hands at the end of the game. We learned that lesson two years ago, I think it was in Portland, when he hit that pull-up three on Brandon [Ingram]. You make someone else beat you, and they did that. You give them credit, but I love the way that our team came together again and really fought and scrapped tonight.”
On the biggest thing he can take away from this season:
“At the end of the season, it’s always about getting away and really taking some time to think about what we could have done better. The strengths and weaknesses of ours, analyzing the season as a whole, then starting to form a gameplan for this summer. This is going to be another long summer. We have a lot of time to work and get better. Let’s organize and prioritize what we need to do so that we give ourselves a better chance next season.”
On how he became better as a coach this year:
“There’s a lot to take with me. I think every year that you do something, you get better at it. The communications, the relationships, the understanding of coaching this team as opposed to last year’s team where it was mainly young players that we were running stuff for and running stuff through. Having somebody like LeBron [James] where I learned on the fly this year. This is what we were trying, now we’re seeing that this works better. Having that awareness and that experience will stay with me forever. That’s another thing that I’ll spend time reflecting on in the weeks to come. It’s tough to answer that right after the season, but there’s plenty for me to take with me.”
On coaching LeBron James:
“It was great. The only thing that was hard was he got hurt. It takes time to build a relationship with somebody, but as our relationship grew and I got to see what it was like coaching him, he was great. I believe if we could have stayed healthy, we would have had a very successful season. He’s an incredible player. He’s an incredible superstar in how unselfish he is. It still blows me away, the talent that he is, to constantly be looking to make the right pass and the extra pass.”
Opening statement:
“I would love to thank our players. With all the expectations on us this year to do great things, and to fall short and to continue to play as hard as they did until the very end of the season, beating two playoff teams, taking another one down to the wire tonight. It just means the world to me as a coach that they’re continuing to fight and not give up and play that hard. It’s beautiful. I want to thank our players and thank my coaching staff as well. It’s been a challenging season, but they’ve continued to, with all the noise as well, show up and work and try to do their jobs to the best of their ability and get players better, get our team prepped and whatnot. I’d love to thank them. Tonight, again, I thought our guys did it. They brought the energy. They gave themselves a chance to win. You get the ball out of [Damian] Lillard’s hands at the end of the game. We learned that lesson two years ago, I think it was in Portland, when he hit that pull-up three on Brandon [Ingram]. You make someone else beat you, and they did that. You give them credit, but I love the way that our team came together again and really fought and scrapped tonight.”
On the biggest thing he can take away from this season:
“At the end of the season, it’s always about getting away and really taking some time to think about what we could have done better. The strengths and weaknesses of ours, analyzing the season as a whole, then starting to form a gameplan for this summer. This is going to be another long summer. We have a lot of time to work and get better. Let’s organize and prioritize what we need to do so that we give ourselves a better chance next season.”
On how he became better as a coach this year:
“There’s a lot to take with me. I think every year that you do something, you get better at it. The communications, the relationships, the understanding of coaching this team as opposed to last year’s team where it was mainly young players that we were running stuff for and running stuff through. Having somebody like LeBron [James] where I learned on the fly this year. This is what we were trying, now we’re seeing that this works better. Having that awareness and that experience will stay with me forever. That’s another thing that I’ll spend time reflecting on in the weeks to come. It’s tough to answer that right after the season, but there’s plenty for me to take with me.”
On coaching LeBron James:
“It was great. The only thing that was hard was he got hurt. It takes time to build a relationship with somebody, but as our relationship grew and I got to see what it was like coaching him, he was great. I believe if we could have stayed healthy, we would have had a very successful season. He’s an incredible player. He’s an incredible superstar in how unselfish he is. It still blows me away, the talent that he is, to constantly be looking to make the right pass and the extra pass.”
