The Los Angeles Lakers met for shootaround on Wednesday morning in El Segundo. This was the last guaranteed shootaround of a difficult 2012-13 Lakers season, but the players were loose and appeared confident that their season would continue past Wednesday night.
Mike D’Antoni said that he planned to use Andrew Goudelock against Houston because the guard was a good three-point shooter.
“[Goudelock]’s ready to play,” D’Antoni said. “He looks good. I like what he can bring. Biggest thing is he’s fearless, and he shoots threes. Around Dwight [Howard] and Pau [Gasol]—since we’re going to play inside-out—that’s going to be huge.”
D’Antoni also said the he believed that Steve Nash was not too far removed from a return, but that was a problem for the playoffs. The biggest goal was obviously to win on Wednesday night and get into the playoffs.
Steve Blake also talked to the media and addressed some of the problems directly related to Wednesday night’s game.
“[Jeremey Lin and James Harden] are extremely good in the open court and in transition,” Blake pointed out. “If we’re turning the ball over or taking shots in bad spacing, they’ll really attack the rim and get guys in foul trouble, and they’re good at finishing around the basket. So, we have to do our best to keep them out of transition.”
Howard, as usual, was last to speak.
“This is our last regular season game, and we’re going to give it everything we got and hope for the best,” Howard said. “We don’t have to have a motivational speech to get guys motivated. We should already be motivated.”
However, Howard did eventually give in to the media's requests for a motivational speech in the style of the movie 300. After telling Pau to put on his “big boy pants,” telling Dwight to “make his free throws” (yes, he referred to himself in the third person during the funny moment), and telling Jodie Meeks to make threes, Howard finished by emphatically screaming with the famous line: “This is Sparta!”
