That's not my point. You know what he brings. He continues bringing it for your team after you signed him. You tell him to take fewer shots because we don't need the scoring that much and we'd like him to be more efficient. He says OK - and does that. Will continue to fumble the ball sometimes because that's just who he is and he does not have much time to improve without practicing much (if he even can improve in that aspect of the game). You evaluate what he brings to the team and you give him 30 minutes. 19 minutes. 10 minutes. Whatever is appropriate. He does not put himself into the game, he's not player-coach. Vogel is the coach. If you know exactly what he brings, you give him x minutes, and he brings EXACTLY what he always brings, why are you getting mad? The guy does what he can. He's not showing up disinterested. He's not whining, killing team spirit, getting techs for no reason... is he? That's my point. Evaluate what he does, see how much of it you need and then use him to get exactly that. And win more games if possible. You don't get mad because he did not suddenly increase his vertical to 37 inches in order to soar like a condor and finish alley-oops 6 times per game. He will soar like a penguin instead, because he's Big Penguin, period.
The AD boys should be ashamed allowing 16 offensive rebounds to a poor rebounding team. Marc Gasol looks even more better every game as a starter, you know he will box out and raise the level of IQ play.
The Lakers bigs can't keep up with the smaller quicker suns team, but I saw lack of hustle and lack of fundamentals in blocking out, they looked soft today. Gasol will at least get others involved on offense, space the half court more for Davis and Lebron, bring some more rhythm to the offense.
trez n Drummond should play very little, pho is taking advantage of them both by matching up shooters like Johnson/Crowder n drawing them away from basket n we dont seem to know how to punish these 2 suns back on other end
What? Don’t let your hatred for all things Drummond blind you to the fact that AD was shooting jumpers and averaging career low numbers even when Marc was playing alongside him before Drummond got here. The lane was WIDE OPEN because our two 7 footers in Marc and AD were both standing around the 3 point line. The only guys who took advantage of the lane being open was Lebron and Dennis.
that's an overstatement, but it was indeed bad. davis was hurt early in the season. when he got back, he didn't get to play with gasol. because we "upgraded".
If Marc and Trezz were so good, the Lakers wouldn't have had to get Drummond. there were clearly issues with the center spot once the Lakers realized they needed a Dwight/Javale type player again. the buyout market had none of those and Drummond was the biggest name. How can we fault Drummond for that? he is a dumb player but that's what the buyout market is for... players who are misfits, usually. The Lakers root problem doesn't start with drummond. He can play a lot better but so can a lot of dudes. what did Kuzma, KCP, Dennis, etc., do all game?
they were bad, too. i still disagree that we had to get drummond. we needed a third string center in case of emergency/injury. we were actually damn good with marc and trez and likely would have been sitting one or both a lot in the playoffs anyway. whatever, it's done now. i just think we made mistakes both short and long term when we brought in drummond. he's a bad fit here (and really, in most places). i think he's trying hard, and i think he does have redeeming qualities. we just really don't need those and do need other things.
So ? Only Bron and Dennis is good enough . AD is at times going to be a wannabe KD Drummond starting or not but it doesn't mean we should not put him in the right conditions to succeed
What was the issue of the center spot ? Marc was part of the ( the starting one) lineup which has the best net rating , Lakers were 1st in D and D rebounding. Marc not scoring pts wasn't a huge problem , individual stats are different than impact AND fit among a lineup and team Lakers FO analyzed the situation like an average fan in the 90es . We lost big time . Period
So we’re blaming a guy who played only 19 minutes and went 5/7 for 12 points, 9 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 block? When Drummond exited the game, the scored was tied. By the time he re-entered we were down double digits.
Well, for us, Playoffs is all that matters. Whatever Drum brought or failed to bring in the regular season doesn't matter. All that matters is his impact on Game 1 so far. He was -4 in 19 minutes. So, not great, but certainly not close to worst move ever territory. On the plus side he did aggressively rebound the ball and kept a few possessions alive for us. On the minus side he let Ayton do pretty much whatever he wanted. Let me put it this way. Drum didn't help us win, but he was not the reason we lost. I do think Vogel should try Marc as the starter to get the ball moving and get both AD and LeBron going early.
+/- isn't always the best indicator . Lakers will kind of survive with him on the floor because they defend at a high level . Drummond shrinking the floor DO prevent us to score a lot of points on most nights , this is the main pb
This forget the situation the Lakers were in that time with AD being hurt. Drummond is like Javale a guy who can eat up minutes but is basically unplayable in the playoffs. That's where I'm at: just like McGee was essentially out of the rotation and we went with AD at the 5 the Lakers need to go back to that.
