HOUSTON — Desperation, and the Lakers needing to play with a sense of it, had been a talking point during Lakers coach JJ Redick’s recent media availability.

Redick knew the Rockets would be desperate to avoid losing the first two games of the best-of-seven first-round playoff series, a deficit fewer than 10% of teams have overcome since 1984.

And after the Lakers beat the Rockets in Game 2 on Tuesday in Los Angeles, Redick knew the Rockets’ desperation would only heighten for Game 3, with no team in NBA history coming back after falling behind 0-3. 

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The Rockets were desperate Friday night. But the Lakers showed, through their words and actions, that they have been just as desperate. 

If not more desperate, helping them take a decisive 3-0 lead in the series after the 112-108 Game 3 victory in overtime. 

“Love it,” Marcus Smart said. “I’ve been talking to the guys since I got here: You got to leave it all on the court, because you never know. That’s been my motto since I got in this league — just play and leave it all on the court, because you never know. It can be taken away at any moment. And with two of our best players down, we got to play desperate. We got to be the most desperate team. That’s how we have been playing, and that’s how we are winning.”

Desperation can be loud. 

It was present when LeBron James backtapped his late steal against Reed Sheppard to Smart, which set up James’ game-tying corner 3-pointer toward the end of regulation to send the game into overtime. 

Or Smart and Rui Hachimura crashing the offensive glass and coming up with crucial boards that set up the Lakers’ crucial points in overtime to help maintain their late lead. 

Diving on the floor for loose balls, not wanting to concede anything.

But it can also be more subtle. 

It can be defensive low-man rotations, quickly closing driving and passing gaps. Securing the defensive rebounds with authority. Being disciplined defensively. 

“We’re all just playing with desperation,” Jaxson Hayes said. “We want to make it to the next round. We’re playing like this is our last game of the year. It’s not even a series like, if we lose today, we’re done, so everyone wants to play like that, and everyone wants to put their body on the line for each other right now.”

This isn’t to say the Lakers have been perfect during the series.

Far from it, which is something Redick acknowledged multiple times after the Game 3 victory. 

But they kept doing what was necessary to be the better team Friday night. 

“Everything that we needed to do, even when it wasn’t pretty, we just kind of found a way to do it,” Redick said. “We’re playing hard. I mean, that’s what you have to do to put yourself in a position to win. There’s some things we can execute better, but I thought from the beginning of the game we played with a sense of desperation, and we played like a team that was down, as did they. They played a great game as well, a hard-fought game, and I thought we matched that.”

Now, the Lakers are just as desperate to end the series in Sunday’s Game 4 at Toyota Center.

“Got one more, it’s not over,” Smart said. “We got one more. And we’re in their home, and nobody wants to get embarrassed in their home. And we got them in a nail-biter, so it’s one more. We can’t worry about what happens after that because we got to take care of that. So we’ll worry about that after the game. Right now, Sunday is the only thing on our mind.” 

For the Lakers, Sunday could be the knockout punch that secures their first playoff series victory since 2023.

“We’re just trying to have that killer mentality right now,” Smart said. “We got them on the ropes, and then it’s our job to try to finish. It’s their job to fight back. And that’s been JJ’s motto all year: Bend, don’t break. And I think we really took that to the head for us. We lived it. We instilled it into us, and you see it the way we played these three games, right? But we got to be like a lion. We got to have that killer instinct. We got them on the ground. We just got to finish them off and keep our foot on their neck.”