Lakers News: Gabe Vincent Enjoys Beating Celtics
Yesterday at 03:15 PM
It truly was a team effort that led to the Los Angeles Lakers picking up a 21-point win over the Boston Celtics on Thursday night. LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Austin Reaves led they way, but the Lakers also got great contributions from their role players with one of the biggest coming from Gabe Vincent.
Vincent knocked down four 3-pointers to finish with 12 points and four assists on the night. Vincent has plenty of history with the Celtics from his time with the Miami Heat where he twice faced off with them in the Eastern Conference Finals and after this game, the guard admitted that it always feels good to take them down.
“They’re a very good team. They’re very well-coached,” Vincent said. “It’s great to go out there and compete against them. Naturally, with the games I’ve had against them, I’m not the biggest fan of the Celtics, per se. So it’s always good to get a win against them.”
When the Heat defeated 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 for them personally, Vincent does still respect them as a team as do the Lakers as a whole, which is why hr believes the team came out so aggressive on Thursday night.
“I think it just our level of respect for them as opponents,” Vincent added. “They are the defending champs, they’re a great team. If you don’t come out with that intensity and that energy, they can blow the walls off. We did what we had to do tonight, we did our job.”
Of particular note for the Lakers on this night was their defense as they held the Celtics’ high-powered offense to just 96 points on 38.5% shooting from the field. And just like JJ Redick and James, Vincent pointed towards the Lakers sticking to their gameplan.
“We really just dialed in our gameplan,” the point guard noted. “We had a great gameplan to just try to make things difficult for them. Our energy, our effort, we rebounded the ball pretty well in the first half especially. We just put ourselves in a great position to win the game. We stayed true to the process. They made a run here and there, but we stayed true to our gameplan and things balanced out for us.”
Vincent is finally beginning to resemble the player the Lakers envisioned when they signed him in free agency two summers ago. And any time a player can help the Lakers take down the Celtics the way Vincent did, he will be greatly appreciated.
JJ Redick praises Lakers for execution of defensive gameplan
As Gabe Vincent spoke about, the Lakers did an excellent job of executing their gameplan against the Celtics and head coach JJ Redick felt it was arguably the team’s best performance of the season.
"I thought that was one of, if not our best, games in terms of executing our defensive gameplan,” Redick said after the win. “Not overreacting to [Kristaps] Porzingis making a few turnaround jumpers. Like I said pregame, you have to be willing to live with stuff. Because of the way we wanted to guard them, it also required a lot of on-ball in terms of staying in front and forcing off the dribble jumpers. It required a lot from our shifts. It required a lot from our low-man to stay out of the blender.
“We started the game in some whites and some fronting in the post. We went away from that because twice they got us scrambling. Outside of those couple plays early, I thought we were just in front of the ball and made them score over the top of us. 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. It's a credit to our guys for executing at a high level."
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