yeah, way too much has been put into the denver performances of a couple players, imo. our stars got outplayed by their top two guys, too. we got outplayed top to bottom. it was their year; they were on fire.
No I don't think that's fair: Lebron and Reaves were really good and AD despite getting outshone by Jokic wasn't bad. Problem was they got nothing from the roleplayers. Shroeder, Rui, Vando, Walker, even Dlo had 1-2 games were they tipped the balance in the first 2 rounds but the dropoff was big vs Denver's role guys unfortunately. I mean Lebron averaged 28 a game on 60% TS and Reaves averaged 21 a game on 74% TS. Those are insanely good number and most times when 2 our of your top 3 guys play like that you win a series let alone get swept by the other team.
i mean, jamal murray outplayed lebron, and jokic outplayed AD. if either star outplays one of the other two in the series, maybe we win regardless of what dlo or rui did.
Owned has a very different context IMO then outplayed. While I wouldn't use the term I could see using the term owned for Jokic over AD but Murray was marginally better than Lebron and Reaves was fantastic. I really have a hard time using the term owned for Lebron and Reaves for that series - they were both extremely good IMO (it's one of the reason I think the series was so frustratingly close for Lakers fans)
I can't get too mad about Jokic outplaying AD, Jokic is just better than him if we're being honest. I do think, though, that if we had this year's version of LeBron (who looks better to me than last year, even before the foot injury) in that series at least a couple of the games swing our way. We needed LeBron to dominate in the halfcourt to close those games out.
This year's version of AD, hitting his mid range again with some 3s sprinkled in, and currently healthy outplayed Jokic in the last 2 weeks, so there's that too, along with LeBron being healthy. If it even comes to anything because of that rarity this year thanks to Numbnuts handicapping our team for 2/3 of the season with his utter nonsense.
yep. if you told me before the series that murray would outplay lebron, i'd have predicted we lost the series.
Offensive numbers are great, but you have to also play great defense in the playoffs- especially when you are trying to beat a team that is better than you.
I’m sorry, but if a team gets swept in a series, they got owned. I couldn’t care less if we were close in most of the games- we aren’t the Flippers. We have a much higher standard.
It may not matter for you being able to proudly refer to it, but it matters for analysis on how to improve and what went wrong or right. Treating it as a binary result is shortsighted.
We won't beat Denver until 1) we keep overhelping off the strong side . 2)Offensively I think AD has a better advantage than Bron against Denver , he should ask for and get the ball more down the stretch
It's a shame, I thought he looked GREAT defensively to start the game. Namely the first few minutes. Thought he was really going to step up to the plate in this one. The offense was not there. Worst +/- in the game.
Nice night for Rui with 17 points and 7 boards. He was hot from three, making 3 of 4 and 7 of 11 shooting overall. Lakers are 6-0 with him in there with the starting 5: Dlo, AR, Lebron, him and AD. Continuity from last year. Who woulda thunk it? Thanks Ham.
It’s a really bad song that was popular for a minute. That one with all the Alex English on it started at the lower half of the rim and crawled over. I’ve never seen one quite like that before.
Yeah.. but come on man..D'Angelo went from avg 16 pts and 5 assists in the 1st two series, to 6pts and 3 assists against Denver, that's a big time drop off, from a player, that you are playing heavy minutes. Theoretically, you expect your Superstars to take up some of that slack, but Lebron wasn't at 100%, and AD was our entire defense. Everyone stepped up, but Russell in that series.
