Rui Hachimura says that the Lakers are focused on getting off to a blistering start next season
Angeles Lakers star forward Rui Hachimura is intent on coming out of the gates hot to start the 2024-25 NBA season. Hachimura recently expressed how dissatisfied he was with the way the Lakers kicked off the previous 2023-24 campaign. As a result, his words imply that the team is ready to put the league on notice from their season opener and onward.
- Rui Hachimura says that the Lakers are focused on getting off to a blistering start next season
the Gonzaga product declared that he and his Lakers teammates are laser-focused on pressing toward the mark from day one to ensure that they don’t leave wins on the table early in the schedule, and that they can finish with a better place in the standings:
“We talked about, before the season started, this year, our key is going to be in the details,” Hachimura said. “We’re going to focus on every possession. It doesn’t matter if it’s the preseason or whatever. For us, it’s a practice. We haven’t had many practices yet. This kind of stuff helps us get in a good rhythm going into the season. Last season, we were kind of messing around the first 30, 40 games and then we came back and we made the playoffs. I think we can’t do that this year again. We have to set the tone and play like we’ve been doing it when the season starts.”
The Lakers finished with a stout 47 wins as the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference last season. Being just three wins shy of reaching the impressive 50-win mark, Los Angeles positioned themselves for a postseason run last spring. However, those 47 wins don’t tell the whole story, as they started the year off 11-9 through their first 20 games and we’re as bad as 19-21 through their first 40.
