LeBron praises Hachimura’s performance

In the Los Angeles Lakers 128-112 Game 1 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies, Rui Hachimura finished with 29 points, six rebounds, and five threes on six attempts.

LeBron’s positive rave about Hachimura

With Hachimura’s 29-point game, he became the first Lakers player to score 25 point or more off the bench in the playoffs since Magic Johnson in 1996. Hachimura’s incredible performance seemed to come out of nowhere, but he’d been asking teammate and protégée LeBron James for advice for weeks. According to coach Darvin Ham, Hachimura was timid when he first arrived, careful around James and Anthony Davis. But LeBron encouraged him to take more shots. When LeBron James tells you to shoot more, “you have to shoot”, said Hachimura.

“I just try to stay in his ear - give him positive motivation, positive messages, let him know how important he is to our team, and in order for us to reach the goal that we want to reach, he has to be a huge part of that,” said James. “And he wants to be. He’s asked me multiple times, ‘what can I do to help the team win?’, and I tell him exactly what I think he can do.”

In the third quarter, Hachimura scored 12 of the Lakers’ 37 points and made all three of his three-point attempts. He said he was inspired to play better by the fact that he had to sit on the bench just three weeks earlier, in a game he’d expected to be playing. James had just come back from injury and was worked into the lineup, leaving Hachimura to watch on the sidelines and get angrier and more motivated to prove he should be on the court. He did exactly that in Game 1. With his 29 points plus Austin Reaves’ 23, Davis’ 22, and James’ 21, the Lakers had four players with over 20 points in a playoff game for the first time since 1998 when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Byron Scott, James Worthy, and Magic Johnson did it.

The Lakers will face the Grizzlies for Game 2 on Wednesday at FedEx Forum in Memphis at 4:30 p.m. ET.