Last season, Alex Caruso reached the NBA Playoffs for the first time in his four-year career. During his debut playoff game with the Los Angeles Lakers, he played in all 21 games and even started with the 6th NBA Finals against the Miami Heat.
Now Caruso is craving for more. During a recent appearance on The Long Shot with Duncan Robinson and Davis Reid, Caruso talked about how eager he is to return to the post-season and how his playing experiences have changed his way of thinking about the regular season:
Going through the playoffs, man … the playoffs are so addictive. It’s so much fun. It’s so much fun to play in the playoffs because everything is intense, everything matters. I’m not saying the regular season does not matter, but there is definitely the same attention to detail, there is not the same intensity, there is not the same ‘do-or-die’ mentality that you get with the playoffs. Honestly, man, like looking back now, in the regular season, these games are like … I’m like, ‘it’s fun, I love playing basketball in the NBA’, but I can not wait to go back does not come back to the playoffs.
Caruso also said that he has a new respect for his former teammate, Rajon Rondo, who has a reputation for hanging out in the regular season:
Rondo, one of my favorite teammates because he’s such a great guy to compete with, he’s getting a bad rap because he’s like a hit or a miss in the regular season and I never really understood why not, and then you hear the ‘Playoff Rondo’ ‘thing. You hear it and he actually shows up and does it. I understand 100% what it is now.
He is such a competitor. He’s the most competitive person I’ve ever had. He is such a competitor that after playing so many seasons in the league and so many games in the regular season, he just wants to win a championship. It does not matter before you come to him after the playoffs anyway, so to see him in his element and then come out and play like that, it clicks for me. It’s like, ‘okay, I understand that now.’
There is good news and bad news for Caruso.
The good news is that the Lakers will more than likely be in the playoffs again this season. They are currently No. 3 seeded in the Western Conference, 3.5 games ahead of No. 4 seeded Denver Nuggets and half a game back from No. 1 seeded Utah Jazz. If they are not catastrophic, they can defend their title.
The bad news is that the playoffs will not start for another three months – 107 days, to be exact. So, until then, Caruso will have to stay strong and, more importantly, healthy. As for the effort, I think it is safe to say that we do not have to worry about AC.
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