Welp, still doable but we didn't do neither. Never figured we'd lose our two best play makers for considerable time toward this last half of the season.
I'm very happy with how our team is ending the season despite all these effing injuries!! (Ingram, Zo, IT2 and just got Hart back) I want us to get 37 wins...but I'll ultimately be happy if we end up with 35 wins. If you told me that Lonzo Ball would MISS 30 games, and Ingram would miss 22 games, and we would still end up with potentially 37 wins? I would tell you that you're effing insane. I truly believe if both had decent health and play 70 games each, we'd be at least .500 right now.
I'd be very happy with at least +10 wins from last season which was the realistic guess of mine, that is, going through the horrendous December schedule, injuries, and such. The optimistic side of me wanted mid-40 wins this year and a trip to the playoffs, but we weren't fortunate enough, though.
...plus the pathetic inexcusable free throw shooting which cost us maybe two to three games. Add that Lillard guy too.
So I was curious how many games we actually lost by poor FT%... 17 GDMF games lost by players missing unguarded attempts from 15 feet... EDIT: Data Source: https://www.basketball-reference.co...N&game_num_type=team&team_id=LAL&order_by=pts
Good lawd...5 of 'em are double digit brick shows. Since management is now into analytics... If this is part of it, they better show it to the coaching staff AND the crew provided they don't know already. I would assume they do. Oh and that Lillard guy. Can't stress that enough. Good find JCL2k6.
This is kind of..sickening, even if maybe some of those aren’t totally on fts. More than a handful clearly were, and that’s unacceptable. Thanks for posting that though, that’s vital information for the team to use going forward. Geez talk about shooting yourself in the foot. IT and Lil Wayne as our backcourt? We’d be destroyed on defense every night. Also I think it’s against league rules to be on lean during games.
Still hurting from that huh? Yeah me too. Me too. I would also say we lost maybe another 3-5 just from not being able to have a star take over the game and provide much needed offense down the stretch. But something Durant said after a game against them stood out to me too. This team is relatively inexperienced especially in crunch time. Knowing what plays to run, knowing what to do at certain points is crucial. That has cost us games as well. But despite all that at one point we still had an outside chance of making the playoffs. That’s what I was hoping for this season. So call me satisfied as to how this season has gone down.
Yep...looking at all thsoe games we lost due to FT's, or injuries, or just a purely RIDICULOUS december schedule where we faced the following teams in a 10 game stretch: Cavs, Warriors twice, Rockets twice, Twolves twice, Thunder, Clippers, and Grizzlies (when they had Conley and were healthy). I'm sorry, but that stretch COMPLETELY screwed us. We better not get a stretch like that again next year.
With all the injuries and the midseason trade and that horrible 9 game losing streak. Still came up with 35 wins. Next season these guys need to stay healthy, including Paul George
Right on the nose. I won't call myself a prophet since I didn't anticipate the injuries or the breakout performances of Josh Hart and Kyle Kuzma. Had we been healthy all season, we definitely could have won 40 games or more. We've made a 9 win improvement each season under Luke. Slow, but steady progress.
I said and voted 30-35 wins at the start of the season so I'm right on track. Honestly I thought it would be right about in the middle of that like 32 or 33 so to me we ended up on the upper end of expectations. For a hot minute there when we had our win streak and before the second round of injuries I thought we might even hit 39 or 40 but, ah well. All in all we ended on a high note beating the Paper Clips and we've got a bright looking future ahead of us with a terrific young core. It was a good season for the first time in ages!
