Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

No Vando
Rui's midrange shot hasn't been falling but he'll be back.
Mental letdown after win in IST: a typical no-hustle play that made me shake my head: Kevin Harlan said it was "great hustle" by DAL, but one guy got an offensive rebound amid 3 Lakers down low; it's as if whatever? on some plays. In a playoff series we wax these mofos, even if they have Kyrie.
Mavs open and hit what? 45 3s? (it was 21 of 43 for them from the arc)

Luka was ailing, on a BTB, and was insane.

Lakers report said let Exum shoot from outside: they were wrong. Still: they leave you wide open? You still gotta knock 'em down.

Lakers don't get to sleep in their own beds until the night of the 16th. Been a long time.

 

exum is a scrub, but he's in the NBA for a reason. you give him wide open look after wide open look and of course he's going to make most of them. if anyone's to blame, it's ham for not adjusting defensively

 

i mean...you don't beat teams that go 21-43 from three...and we almost did.

the defense wasn't good, but if exum doesn't have an out-of-body experience, we win a road game against a good team. i'm not that worried about this one. let's see how we respond.

thought it was strange that ham went away from reddish down the stretch when it was clear we needed more defense.

bummer we got THJ's one good game in three. when he's on, he's basically an all star. he's just not on that often. and several of his shots were NOT wide open. he was just hot.

AD's injury concerns me. that one's been sort of nagging, and he looked hampered by it. still played pretty well, but it's something to watch.

 

Daring Exum and Williams to beat you is a good strategy, but that only works if you're stopping the other guys. Luka did his thing both as a scorer and as a passer, you're not going to stop him but you can't let him be both a scorer AND a facilitator. When you're letting him do that you need to switch up the game plan and just let him score, focus on making it tough on the rest of the team. Also, if you're letting Exum and Williams and Luka do whatever they want, you also can't let Timmy Jr drop a 30 piece on you. By the 4th 3 any of those guys made, you gotta start respecting the shot.

Good
-Bron and AD both did superstar things offensively. That's always fun to see.
- thought Austin put together a really solid game off the bench.
- TP looked like he was being defended by the Lakers. Crushed it from 3.

Bad
- injuries. AD is laboring through his. No Vando = no win. Cam? Is it an injury or dumb coaching.
- minutes. Bron played 40 and AD 37. In a loss on the front end of a back to back.
- defense. Mavs did whatever they wanted whenever they wanted.
- coaching. Ham came in with a decent plan but the lack of adjustments when it didn't work was a stubborn rookie mistake.
- DLO. Yuck.

 

we missed Vandy out there, big time.

 

Not a division banner. Wasn’t one team that would not have wanted to win this new institution (since that fact did play out and give it legitimacy) …. of an in season “Tournament”. With certainly monetary incentive.

Jeezus the “Ring” is the only thing crowd. Do something other than watch the game of professional NBA basketball with an enjoyable competitive team during the season, and only come back when your team is in the playoffs. What fun! Your odds are great for that deferred happiness …. 1 in 30.

 

meh

i find comfort knowing the league clearly forced them to do it. if it was up to the lakers, they wouldn't have raised it

 

Right … because it was a nothing burger of an accomplishment.

 

it's a made up tournament that's nothing more than a cash grab. i'm happy they won a few games in a row, but that's about it. definitely not anything worth celebrating or worse, raising a banner for. but i get it, the league has to legitimize it and that's why they made sure the lakers raised a banner for it. wouldn't have been a good look for the league if they hadn't

 

Did any pool reporter ask about Cam.
Look he wasn't having a good game against Luka or anything but he's clearly a lot better defender than rui, prince, and reaves.
he's also hit big shots in the 4th quarters this season multiple times

Laker twitter said he got hit in the thigh but he's not in the injury report.

Almost felt like Ham went with Rui instead of Cam and Christie to give him minutes after he was basically benched at critical times in the IST

 

Jaded entitled Laker Fans for the win …. errr…. fake win.

 

The TEAM genuinely thought it was worth celebrating but some fans are embarrassed over a different looking (on purpose) "cumulative" banner to commemorate it.

 

as someone who originally thought the IST was a dumb cash grab, I'm really not seeing the point of naysayers now. This tourney took regular season games that all count towards regular season record (sans the 1 championship game), added a little incentive that increased the comeptitive juices in players and resulted in much higher quality basketball being played than we usually see in December. It took the most boring part of the season that casual NBA fans might skip and made it more interesting, with the championship game being the highest viewed non-Xmas regular season game in the last 5 years.

Nobody is comparing this to the Larry O'brien, but it adds a little fun and is a different kind of tourney than the best of 7. At this point the anti-IST crowd has a strong "old man yelling at the clouds" vibe.

 

the funny thing is that we'd all be clowning on any other team that had won it and hung a banner up

 

What are you so insecure about in your Lakers fandom that this embarrasses you? It was a hard fought win, the team and organization clearly were proud in the aftermath …. and that banner isn’t getting hung on “your” front door.

 

that's great. doesn't mean i have to like the fact that they're hanging a banner for it. winning the WC is also a hard fought win and something to be proud of, and they don't hang banners for those. but like i said, it was 100% the league's doing and not the lakers

 

i have lengthy psychologist thoughts about fandom here, but i wonder if part of what attracts or keeps lakers (or, for example, yankees) fans is this "we're better than you, fundamentally" claim, which is sort of ironically strengthened by the legions of haters who hate the franchise for the same reason.

"we don't celebrate small stuff" is really powerful for some people. and i get the allure. i happen not to be that kind of person, though. i also think part of the whole stern veto that nearly killed the franchise was an organizational embrace of this general philosophy--the other owners were like "the audacity!", and the lakers were like...annnnddd??

this doesn't justify beelzebub's trade veto, but i think it provides useful context.

now i'm rambling.

i've already forgotten about the banner.

 

absolutely. the "anything aside from a championship is a failure" mentality is what separates the great franchises from the rest of the field and is something to be proud of

anyways, there really isn't much more to be said. good on them for winning the IST and if it weren't for the league, they wouldn't have raised a banner to celebrate it because at the end of the day, it's not a championship

 

won but giving up 45pts in 4th to a lame duck team isnt acceptable