This was going to be a tough test. Best backcourt in the league just lit us up completely. Our defense has a long way to go to stop a team with this much fire power. No excuses though. We should have done better than this.
In peak form, Warriors are in the top half of the Western Conference. As constructed, our crew is close to being the 10th spot or maybe the 8th spot overall matters aligning perfectly. What they have to deal with going forward is not blowing games to teams they have no business of losing to and steal a game or two from the higher seeds.
Plus side of tonight - Booz played well, Kobe continues to look very good, Ed Davis continues to impress, Lin improved offensively, and I thought Ronnie Price played well. Randle also had some good looking moves at the end.
Love what Byron is saying right now by the way. We didn't play hard enough, we can't go out there and just say let's see how this goes, have to have more initiative and set the tempo. Totally agree.
Don't have TWC [damn DISH Network!]... They'll replay the game but I never liked watching losses. Don't care for the highlight snippets since they don't tell the full story. Good to hear that there are positives. It was 88-84 Lakes near the end of the third. Thanks for the observations, LJ.
Agreed... Those two make up the bulk of the bench scoring unless Lin decides to take over for the second unit. Henry will move the ball, run his cuts. The ball tends to stick with Young though but that won't happen as much with Scott overseeing movement.
Our half court sets in the third with the starters were pretty decent, really. But we never imposed our will defensively at all.
On your latter comment, it will take some time for them to collectively form that mindset. Defensively of this group, 24 has IT [even if he does free safety most of the time], Price has IT and I'll say Davis too. Scott will have to drill that mentality into the others as he stated when he took on this job.
To put this in perspective, with 3 minutes left in the third quarter with the GS Warriors ahead 90 to 69, Klay and Curry combined for 45 points - half of their team's output. That's what I mean when I say the best backcourt in the biz just lit us up. I think their shooting stats at that point were Klay was 9/13 which is 70% (and 5/6 three pointers), and Steph was 6/9, 66% and 3/4 three pointers. Ouch. That'll kill ya. Granted that backcourt is the toughest we will match up against all year.
They were down 21!? I must have looked at the wrong game's box score thinking they were up four with three in the third. Crazy, but what happened appears to be an aberration. It happens that some teams just get THAT hot and run a spree. Lakers will tighten it up as the season progresses.
^^ Yeah, it wasn't pretty. Klay and Steph were red hot and we did nothing at all to cool them down. They basically killed us. The other wings like Rush, and Barnes did well offensively, too.
But hopefully they'll take it and learn from it. They play the same team next game on Sunday. Let's see if they adjust at all.
Well, we got lit up, but they are a better team right now. Still, I'm sure we'll make some improvements.
Ed Davis, Lin, looked good...Randle came alive at the end. Kobe played well, too. Other than that, not much to take away. I already can't stand the front-court defensively...Hill/Boozer. I'm praying Scott plays Davis a lot more at that 5 position...
^^ Agreed that Booz and Hill front court have a ways to go defensively, but they didn't sink us last night. It wasn't GS's bigs but their guard play that killed us.