Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

right: monster game by AR, couldn't miss until the last minute

wrong: we needed a monster game from AR to win by 1 point. On a normal night this would have been another loss.

 

A win’s a win.

 

Nets reserve players 49-Lakers 12.
Yeah ,Rob they don't need any bigs.
P.S.They lost to Clippers by f***ing 59 points

 

Okay, Brooklyn were Cam-less, with Johnson and Thomas out; we had AD and D F-S out. Clips beat Nets by 59 a couple days ago; we beat them by 1, 102-101, and D-Lo just missed hitting his 6th 3 of the game with 2 secs left, which would have won the game for the Nets, but it was not to be. How sweet that would've been for him. But I heard Swaggy P had a hex on that last shot. Rumors...

D-Lo's pal AR had 38/3/3 with 2 steals and a block on 13 for 23 shooting to take up the slack of AD's absence with his plantar fasciitis.

Hey: a win's a win, even when you feel like you just barely beat another bad East team and that a truly good team beats them by...well, not 59, but, ya know...like, 15?

Bron 29/7/8
Max: 2 for 13 shooting. Wonder about that knee. He got 33 mins and played D so it must be okay.

Trey Jemison III: 15 mins: 0/4/0 with 2 blocks, no shots attempted. He's certainly big, let's give him that.

DK was 0-3 from deep and I'm sure there's a lot of talk about how he'd respond mentally to being sent down to the South Bay Lakers for a spell.

Play of the game?: Lakers up 5 with 2 1/2 mins left. We're all nervous they could blow a game to the Nets, who were w/o their top 2 scorers. Fast break: AR lobs to Bron: thunderous slam: up 7, suddenly felt like we were going to win. These are games you have to win. They got it done.

I could be what the Freudians call "projecting" but the Crypto crowd felt like a microcosm of the general LA mood: still in a state of mild shock or world-weary sadness over the fires. Who could blame 'em? I'm far away and still feel kinda gutted by it all. This is going to take a long time to come back from. Ballmer - who totally has the money, donated $15 million that he had curled with with some lint in his back pocket. Joey Buss donated $10K, Anthony Davis $20K. Shohei Ohtani donated $500K. Wish I had more to send.

I confess I'm nervous about us in Inglewood on Sunday. We need AD. We need Finney-Smith.

 

Yuck

 

We are a really, really bad team without AD on both offense and defense.
It really shows when both AR and LeBron have great nights and we still barely beat one of the worst teams in the League.
At least it was fun to see best buds Austin and DLO go at one another.

 

yeah, i was bummed about such a weak win, but any win without AD is a miracle, tbh.

 

It's embarrassing, even without AD. We had at least 6 of our 9-man playoff rotation, we were missing the top defenders on AD, DFS and Vando. It goes to 7 out of 9 if you count Knecht instead of Vando.

And we still defended well, holding them to 101 points, so it was the offense that didn't work. Rui has to do better. 10pts is horrible in a game without AD. I lost my patience with him, he's just underwhelming. Then Dalton going 0 for 4. Awful. Max also has to do better.

I'm hoping JJ pulls the plug on Rui and starts DFS from now on. See if Rui can bring the scoring punch that Dalton hasn't been by playing against bench units and going to games knowing that's his role, he should enjoy it. We try for 2 weeks and if he proves to be unable to do that, we strongly pursue to trade him.

 

Rui is the new whipping boy for fans now that DLO was jettisoned.
I get it, but the dude is shooting 40% from behind the arc this season.
He’s inconsistent, but I’ve learned to live with it, just like I did with Kuz.
The FO seems to think he still has room to grow based on all they’ve been saying about him recently.
That being said, if we can significantly upgrade at another position without having to give up too much draft capital, I’m fine with trading him. However, I’m not interested in letting him go for a marginal upgrade since we need significant upgrades at backup Big, and POA guard spots.

 

The Nets were pissed about the awful blowout the night before and yes AD is important and all - I'm not arguing that. Losing him is doubly bothersome though as the Lakers have no real second string C or really second string PF behind him right now. It's both the loss of what AD brings and the over exposure of what the Lakers lack to begin with that hurt the Lakers. I mean the Lakers bigs who get big minutes sans are two tweener forwards in Lebron and Rui and then throw in no DFS so that the defense is going to be that much worse

Plus the game was closer in part because Lebron deferred to a gassed AR to try to get his first career 40 point game. You can certainly call it a pyrrhic victory but you could see this coming while watching the game and see some glimmers of a team that was trying to get one of their guys over the top in an otherwise meaningless game in a long season.

 

I actually liked DLo and he was our best orchestrator by a mile after Bron. Team played better with him, he was just not good enough in important games because teams went after him and he had no solutions.
Rui is just underwhelming most games. He's rebound ratio is likely one of the worst in the league for his height and position. He's an ok defender but not a net positive. He never passes the ball. So what he offers is scoring, otherwise he's not doing much in the floor. He's not scoring much, so it's a problem imo.

Anyway, he's starting again today, JJ seems to not want to make that move

 

Trade AD for Vucevic and LaVine
Embarrassing.

 

Needed AR and AD to step up once the Lakers got back into it: cut the lead to 11 and had momentum, LBJ to the bench. That momentum died yuck

 

Not good enough and not talented enough, our best player is a 40yr old

 

I'm not sure why anyone would expect a different outcome here.

Clippers own us. Lue has made it his life's mission to beat us. We have no answer for Zu. Pit Stain likely offered each player their own toilet if they secure the win against us in our first visit to the new arena. Clips are extremely deep and send waves at you.

It's a bad matchup for Austin. He either went Casper or is still sucking wind from his career night. It's a bad matchup for AD, these are the matchups that has him screaming into the void for a center.

Then you have Bron who looked his age tonight with those 4 missed layups.

I think the game plan by Lue was to ignore Rui and live with the results. He's not a high usage or volume player, so he's not beating you. He never gets that many back cuts. I don’t think they fell asleep that many times defensively.

Max and DK were fine, but that's nowhere near enough to makeup for what we were short of tonight.

 

Is FO trolling fans.Every game for more than 2 seasons it's f***ing apparently that they need a big who can substitute AD ,not Koloko or Jemison

 

Weird game. Lakers play their first game in Intuit and lose to Clips 116-102.
If you look at the quarters:
1st: Clips win by 6
2nd: Clips win by 9
3rd: even
4th: Lakers win by 1

You'd never guess we were down 90-64 at one point.

Zubac really pushed around AD. I was surprised how much bigger Zu plays against AD.
AD 5 for 14. 16/10 with 3 blocks
Zu 9 for 16. 21/9 with 3 blocks. AD played 37 mins to Zu's 35. It's telling. Jit right there is a clue to what we need.

Did the Lakers have an offensive rebound in the first half? I don't think so. If they did it was, like 1. 5 for the game and a couple were Lebron missing a chip shot, rebounding, then missing again.

Right now Clips and Lakers have similar records but Clips are better with Kawhi back. They're better, period. Pains me.

We had 15 turnovers and I counted: 10 were bad passes. Credit some of that to LAC's D: rated 2nd in the NBA.

I didn't expect us to win. I thought both teams played really well over the first 16-18 mins, then we missed open shots and Clips hit shots, and went into the locker room up 15. I didn't expect us to fall down 90-64. I didn't expect us to get it back to 11. It was a rough game. D F-S's defense looks good, but he's still not giving us anything on offense. Sorta like Vando. D F-S: 22 mins: 0/1/3 with a steal. Missed 3 pretty open looks from deep. Ah...well.

Clips are hard for me to like. Beardie has always been unlikeable. Norman Powell is a scoring machine, but not the smartest player and he takes himself way too seriously and never smiles. Kind of a d***, I think. He will go to his right, invariably. And Kawhi? I've never seen him smile until the camera caught him flash a quick smile on the bench tonight. Dude's an assassin though if he stays healthy. Just insanely good.

I like DK's midrange game. And he hit 2 of 3 from deep. Shooters gonna shoot, DK!

Opposing scorers will pick on AR and you wonder how much room for improvement he has in his defensive game. Looked like he knocked knees late and was in pain, but a camera caught him wincing in pain on the bench and telling a teammate what happened and the teammate laughed, so I don't think it's serious.

The Lakers seem unable to play a solid 48, win or lose. There are hideous lulls every game, and the worse the lull, the bigger the hole to try to climb out of. Falling down 90-64 was just too much.

Caught the game via NBA-TV Clips feed. Their PBP guy isn't bad. But Jim Jackson is BORING AF and talks way too much. Thank gawd for the mute button.

Highlight of the game, for me: Max's brother gets subbed in in garbage time, gets fouled, is standing at the line to shoot FTs and Max comes over and facing him directly, says something to him and his brother laughs.

Ah, well. Their Big ate us up. We need a guy like that. I'm not sure I see us getting a guy like that. Hope I'm wrong.

Rough game. Next up: Wiz @ Crypto for MLK Day. Gotta get that.
EDIT: Naw: we play Wiz on Tue. Happy MLK Day, everyone!

 

AD wasn’t up for it tonight. You’re gonna get games like that from him 5-6 times a season. Used to it now.

 

instead of having a monster frontline of Zu and AD, we are now scrambling to find a big body to play with or back up AD. I’m still seething nearly 6 years after we threw away Zu for absolutely nothing. Tragic Johnson is the worst executive in the history of Western Civilization

 

Meh..We won a Championship with Javale and Dwight, the year after we traded Zubac. I'll take that all day, the Flippers haven't won anything with him.

The real issue is that Rob went all space cadet,, with this AD at 5 crap after the Chip, If we had kept Zubac, Pelinka would have traded him for a guard by now, and we'd still be looking for another quality big today.