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http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nba...lakers-all-you-hear-is-kobes-mouth/ar-AAd4frs

By Steve DelVecchio

The Indiana Pacers signed free agent center Jordan Hill on Tuesday, and it sounds like the 27-year-old won’t need as many aspirin with his new team as he did with his old one.

Hill went to the Lakers via trade a few years back and played 70 or more games in each of his last two seasons in Los Angeles. He became very familiar with Kobe Bryant during that time, and he spoke to reporters about that earlier this week.

“When he’s on the floor it’s like, all you hear is Kobe’s mouth,” Hill explained, per a video that Shane Young posted on Instagram. “On the floor, all you hear is Kobe’s mouth — during practice and games. He gets loud. A lot of people can’t handle it, I guess.”

Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Kobe takes practicing just as seriously as he takes games, which is one...

I want to get some POV looks at our players. So I'm going to be crunching some stats and offering player comparisons. I invite others to make their comparisons, too. I'm interested in where our players are in our eyes right now, and what we can see going forward for them. With such a young team, that prospecting feeling is contagious.

TARIK BLACK

PROJECTIONS
Scoring Efficiency: 5.11
Passing Efficiency: 1.83
Hustle Efficiency: 3.40
Position: BIG
Positional Efficiency: 72
-Tarik is going to give the Lakers about what he did last season. He's a decent scorer, a respectable decision-maker, especially for a big, and he's a solid hustle player. He offers a bit of versatility, being able to play the 4 against many 4s and the 5 against all but the tallest of centers.

Role: Second String, Heavy Rotation


I expect Tarik to begin the season in...

Let me preface this by saying I did not break this down. This was posted by fiendisoc from LG. I messaged him a couple of days ago and asked if I could have permission to use his stuff on this site because I believe he does a fantastic job of breaking stuff down. From here on out it's his stuff...

In an earlier discussion, I mentioned my problem with the Princeton offense:

While the real Princeton is better than the *version of it* we ran last season, its pure form is also outdated for today's league. For the high post sets, the only way you're going to get the space you need to cut into the lane is if your center or 'hub' can handle the ball, pass, and shoot 3's or very high % 2 pt jumper's, and all other players are also 3 point threats. Otherwise the defense is just going to compact in and your team is going to be shooting outside most of the time.

Back-cuts, which is a staple of the system, are few and far between in the NBA. Because most of the time, they aren't...

I am by no means a statistician and as much time as I love spending on here and watching the Lakers, my time still has limits. I've only had time to analyze the first half of the 2nd game but I found some good stuff.

After it became apparent the stat keepers at the Summer League are either drunk or not paying attention, I decided to try to keep stats myself. Instead of going for just traditional stats though, I tried to keep track of a few others. The one that I really wanted to look into was Effective Screen Setting. For some reason we run the Princeton offense which is predicated on ball-movement, man-movement, and off-ball screens. I wanted to see just how effective those screens are because we never seem to be open off of them. An "Effective Screen" in my opinion is one that makes contact with the player and creates space for the ball handler.

I also looked at Close Outs on Shooters, Caught Ball Watching, Hedging/Rotating, and Changed Shots (instead of blocked shots). The...