Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving has been known as a scorer throughout his career. While he has embraced that, Irving’s maturation in the NBA has come from trying to impact the game in different ways along with his scoring.
In Monday’s 121-104 win over the Los Angeles Lakers, Irving, who had 26 points and six assists, saw the value of doing the little things to win a game that was uneven to say the least. Despite being up as much as 19 points in the first half, Brooklyn had a slow start to the third quarter and let the Lakers get back into the game right away by letting Los Angeles start off the period on a 10-0 run.
Once the fourth quarter came, the Nets got their act together and started stringing together good possessions to open the game back up and lead the Lakers by double digits. Irving spoke after the game about how important the little things were in winning this game:
“Every team is gonna make a run f we’re not making shots. I felt like we got a few great ones that went in and out or just didn’t go our way and majority of the offense tonight for the Lakers was in transition. So, we just wanted to make it difficult for them and just make them do things in the halfcourt that could set our defense and put us in position to be successful. A few offensive rebounds went their way. But, again, we’ve been talking about it over this kind of stretch of just doing the little things and once other teams do a little things, come in and get offensive rebounds, they get extra shots, then they’re gonna make a run or two.”
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