Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

This is the sixth game we were lucky to win. I call it tempting fate.

 

We just forgot... this is how it used to be back in the Kobe/Shaq/Kobe/Pau games.

Gotta say, though, Kuz turned into KuzCP there for a moment.

 

I don't call it tempting fate, I call it a a sign of a great team winning ugly games. That's what you need to be a championship team, finding ways to pull out the W even when the going is tough.

 

Maybe, if this winning percentage keeps up all year... I'll have to agree with you... but the jury's still out on the great team label for me.

I admire their tenaciousness in crunch time... but the great teams have more blowouts.

We cannot do this in the playoffs or it will end in tears.

 

I’ll give credit to Memphis for drafting Morant. He is the perfect replacement to Mike Conley Jr. and they saved a lot of money.

Lakers back to winning expectations. Life is good.

 

The gold standard for great teams seems to be a plus ten point differential. These are the 73-9 Warriors, 72-10 Bulls, 69-13 Lakers (with the 33 game winning streak had a plus 12.)

We are doing quite well at 8.8
However the Mavericks also have an 8.8 positive differential because they've blown out some teams, and we haven't reached the difficult part of the schedule.

The Showtime Lakers had 8 point differentials even 6 point differentials and they are great teams.

So yes, it seems like I'm being too hard on this team... however having watched each game closely it seems every time we go up double digits on a team we relax and let them back in. I'm thinking we should be about a 12 point differential so when we come to the difficult schedule we can still fall back to eight rather than be at eight and fall down to four.

Anyway this is the optimism thread so I'll leave you all to it.

I'm glad we are winning also

 

i've watched pretty much every dallas game. the lakers are better in a way that the record (but not the point differential) captures. mavs also lost to the knicks. twice!!

as weezy said: we're taking care of business when we need to, which is GREAT. december will be rough, and there will be more impactful injuries, so my advice to the negative nellies is to try to enjoy it now. i mean, unless the real enjoyment is in being right about not winning a title, in which case...golf clap for you.

 

Pile on the wins now, rest at the end of the season. Better than playing catch-up. Kobe’s achilles says hi.

 

So according to you, if I don't blindly smile and enjoy, I'm secretly cultivating my master plan of following a team for my entire life, posting on a modestly trafficked message board, so I can take pleasure at watching them lose?

I think as an experiment abeer, I will just agree with everything you say for a week and see if that adds to the quality of the board.

Starting now.

This team is fantastic, I think our play perfectly mirrors our record.
I see nothing wrong, and I don't see any reason why we won't keep winning at this clip and take the championship with similar ease.

Am I doing this right? Let me know when you want me to stop.

 

Who determined this gold standard? That 73-9 Warriors team lost in the Finals, so using regular season stats as the "gold standard" is pretty bold. What about last year's Raptors? The Warriors the year before? 2012 Miami? 2013 Miami?

All those teams had a lower point differential than we have now. This team is 14-2 and you have rightfully earned the reputation of being a downer. You're free to do what you want, but after 7 years of being terrible, the positives outweigh the negatives and it's not even close. Personally, I find it remarkable someone can use so many words to stress over a 14-2 team with 2 top 5 players in the game and a very real chance at a ring this season.

 

You're in luck wallangong... I've resolved to say nothing but positive things this week.

You and abeer are correct... we are 14-2 and destined to continue winning and dominating at that pace for the rest of the year.

Do we have a rough schedule coming up in December? No problem

Nothing can stop us... all has been solved with AD. We are winners... not hopers. We have no holes... we have no weaknesses and it is pointless to debate our inevitable rise to the top. Yassss.

 

I would expect nothing less than such petulance.

 

The only thing that irritates Lakers fans more than the team wearing purple at home, which will only happen three more times this season, is the way their gold uniforms have looked since the 2017-18 season when Nike replaced Adidas as the NBA’s official apparel partner. Many fans feel it looks more like highlighter yellow than the traditional gold the Lakers used to wear. “The most often complained-about thing is that the gold is wrong,” Lakers chief operating officer Tim Harris said. “The first year we had the Nike uniform the gold did look like a highlighter but Nike tells us the gold that we wear now matches the gold back in the early days of Kobe [Bryant]. What fans are upset about is the evolution of the color but we were told they have the gold back to what it used to be but a lot of people think it’s still too yellow so we’re going to look at that after the season.”
– via Arash Markazi @ Los Angeles Times

 

How about this advanced stats.
Last 10 NBA champions after 15 games.
2010 Lakers 12-3, 2011 Dallas 11-4, 2012 Miami 11-4, 2013 Miami 12-3, 2014 SAS 13-2, 2015 GSW 13-2, 2016 Cavs 11-4, 2017 GSW 13-2, 2018 GSW 11-4, 2019 Toronto 12-3.
Toronto,Miami ,C Bags or Denver has same or better records
No team with 10-5 record (Clippers) won a championship