NBA FINALS: LAKERS VS. HEAT

October 5, 2020

Frank Vogel

Los Angeles Lakers

Practice Day

Q. Frank, you mentioned you wanted to take a look at the tape, of course, before evaluating, and especially that first quarter with the turnovers. Was there anything you could tell that was emblematic throughout the team as to why something like that would occur in that case?

FRANK VOGEL: Good defense. You know, credit the Miami Heat. We were careless in some situations, but I think they took four charges throughout the game, they fronted the post, forced us to make difficult post entry passes. So a lot of it was their defense, them being active with their hands. This is what they're great at, and we didn't handle it well enough.

Q. I was just wondering how Danny is doing with the hip -- I know he's fine to play, but has he been limited much in whatever you guys have been able to do on-court-wise over the last few days?

FRANK VOGEL: Yeah, he has some tightness in his hip. It's not an injury. They're trying on a daily basis to make sure that they keep it loose. I don't know how much that's having an impact on his play. But he's able to go. So we'll continue to monitor it.

Q. I'm curious throughout this process, kind of a big-picture question, how much time and energy have you guys as a staff spent thinking about sort of the mental well-being of your team? I know there are veteran guys and there's a lot of trust in that direction, but this is obviously a taxing situation. LeBron I think called it one of the hardest things he's ever done. How much time and energy is devoted to that, and what do you sort of make of it?

FRANK VOGEL: Well, obviously mental health is very important. I love that the league over the last few years has really grown in the resources provided to our players and our staff, and we've made sure to highlight that here in the bubble, that this is going to be a mentally challenging thing. We've on several different occasions put team psychologists or NBA psychologists or our team psychologist in front of our team just to remind them of the resource, encourage them to talk to someone if they need help, and then we've all got to support each other.

We have talked about it a lot and spent a lot of attention making sure that everybody is doing okay.

Q. AD talked about just a lack of communication on the defensive end. Given the number of vets and defensive-minded guys you have on your team, is that surprising? And what sort of is the difference in your experience between guys who maybe are communicating on a given night and when that talk turns off?

FRANK VOGEL: Yeah, we typically communicate as well as any team that I've been on, or been with, and I don't think the communication was the biggest factor last night. We certainly had some breakdowns, but we just weren't as sharp as we needed to be to win a game in the NBA Finals against a great team. So communication was a part of that.

Q. I'd like to ask about your experience in Orlando. What opportunity has this season in the bubble given you to improve as a team?

FRANK VOGEL: Well, we've had a lot of time to be with each other and to get a lot of extra work in. Obviously this is an environment where once we're done with practice or a film session team meeting, you don't go home to your families or to your personal lives. You spend more time with each other, dinners and things like that, gatherings that we would have throughout the bubble. But it's been an all-work environment. When you have that type of situation, your group really has an opportunity to grow together.