Ex-Coach Luke Walton Discussion

When Luuke is most impressed with his game .....

 

Current Philosophy:

Everyone plays, and wins don't matter

 

the pill popping one is brilliant and apropos

 

Don't think effort was an issue yesterday. The Spurs are a well oiled machine. They outsmarted us, outexecuted us, outtalented and skilled us, but I don't think they played any harder.

 

I disagree. Effort was a huge issue. Spurs played at half speed and still blew us out.

 

Reminds me of an old linebacker who use to play for the Steelers, Andy Russell. He was one of the vets in 1969 when Chuck Noll came. After a few weeks, Chuck Noll gets the group together and tells the players that their winning, or lack their of, has nothing to do with their attitudes. The reason why they were losing was they just weren't good enough. Couldn't run fast enough, couldn't execute well enough. He told them he was gonna get rid of most of them. And he did, and the rest is history.

So, with that, as unfortunate as it was to fire Mitch, if you cant do the job, its time to go. Only so much a coach can do. Coach has so many responsibilities, you need the talent evaluators to bring in the talent while the coach spends his time creating the culture. I think Luke has a lot of skills and he is young and will have the energy for a long time to get the job right. Lakers now have to bring in some talent to merge everything together and I believe it will happen.

 

Yeah because they're a lot, a lot better than us. I don't think a lack of consistency ball movement, a lack of communication defensively, and bad decisions and turnovers are because of lack of effort. You can play hard all you want, but eventually you have to make shots. You have to play with a rhythm and a pace. You have to play smart basketball. That is something this team just doesn't have right now. I don't think it's because they aren't trying hard enough. They're just not a good team.

 

We have a few of the same issues we have been having the past few years. The effort on defense just isn't there and we do not seem to have a defensive scheme. We have a few people playing hard and that know how to play team defense. On the pick n roll we still don't seem ready to fight the screen. The guards get picked off much easier than most other teams it seems to me. Then we follow after the person screened but so far behind the rest of our defense is usually at a disadvantage. There are ways to attack pick n rolls on defense instead of just reacting to what happens. If we don't have an aggressive way to attack the other teams offense we need to develop one. If we have one and the players just can't execute it then we need better defensive players. I want the best defensive unit starting we can put on the floor. I get so tired of watching other teams score like we are not even on the court. Even if we struggle on offense I want to see a team playing that is trying to compete and wants to win. Completely had enough of this just going through the motions crap. Ingram, Nance, Zu, I want people that are committed to defense. We may have trouble scoring in half court sets but lets play great defense and score off our defense. Get some energy going and let fans see the teams wants to win. Maybe some of the others will decide to join the show. Start Metta.. I don't care, I have just seen all the uninspired defense I can stand to watch. We may turn into the Grizzlies of five or six years ago but at least they were fun to watch. You could tell they wanted to win and had some pride. I want a team identity.