WMC 24-25: What To WMC About Now?

Swept by the Bulls, Magic and the Pistons

 

Ups and downs of the regular season .. Never get too high or too low and have realistic expectations ..

This team needs rest , they had 2 consecutive days off only once since Feb 25 ..

 

annoys me that we told on ourselves by playing great defense for a month, then just let it all go again.

any credible team will smash these guys. boston plays defense every night. sweep.

 

The lack of consistency continues to haunt this team.

 

This Laker Team cannot relax when they have a lead.. they're not that Team.
Hopefully they figure that out sooner than later...

 

the flipside to jsm's conference record optimism is that if we were just like the other western conference playoff teams against the east, we'd be firmly in 2nd place.

i get that road games against EC teams are especially tough for us given that the fans really come out for them, which riles up the home team for several reasons. but still, we needed to be over .500 against a really weak conference for the year, and we finished under.

 

Of course Ja is at shoot around and might make his return against us after his 6 game absence… only fitting.

 

yeah, that and we get the "this is why we fired the coach" game, too.

 

Ja is always at shootarounds, get it?

I'll see myself out.

 

Just try to stay healthy .. 11 games in 17 days , hasn't been done by a team since the 2020-2021 shortened season .

One last effort against Houston before getting 2 days of rest .. before playing 3 games in 4 days with an early Sunday start .

f*** the league

 

This schedule is so difficult

The NBA really has it in for us

No doubt about it

 

All the others top 8 teams have basically played 8 games in the latest 17 days , 9 for Denver ...

 

Yeah I'm as pissed as anyone about the schedule...but I think we're handling it as best we can.

These next 3 home games (HOU, GSW/NOP b2b) have to ALL be wins before we have 4 of our last 5 on the road AGAIN (@OKC, @OKC/@DAL b2b, HOU at home, and @POR).

My hope here is that OKC actually ends up resting their guys before our 2 game set with them...and it's possible if CLE happens to lose maybe 1 or 2 more games (and they've been SLIDING as of late), and OKC continues to win their games up until our game and they clinch HCA across the entire league. I can also see OKC resting their guys strategically against us - and both of those games SURPRISINGLY are NOT nationally televised (one is on NBATV, which doesn't count). I don't know what the league was thinking here to not have either one televised...stupid

 

I know Lebron still doesn't look right and Rui is only legit 3 level offensive threat outside the stars but it's bothering me this team hasn't been able to just explode for like 150 points or something.

Luke, Lebron, AR are not selfish players but it hasn't really clicked as well as I thought it could. Lebron is a force off ball, AR played a ton off of Lebron for years now, only Luka really has not off ball game. Lakers have guys who can hit open 3's and at least one lob threat. Thought the fit would be better TBH - maybe the lack of a another big and losing your most consistent threat in Rui was a bigger deal than I thought

 

It’s been surprising just how important Rui has been for us. His 3pt shooting and cutting just lead to 15 open points. But more than that, it means that opposing teams can’t load up 4 defenders on Luka, LeBron and Reaves like they can when Vando’s out there.

 

Vando lack of threat again has become a problem - I like him as a player and he's started attacking the basket stronger but in the playoffs I would be prepping that he won't be playable.

Rui's size even though he's not a great rebounder you still have to deal with so it also makes small ball work for the Lakers unlike Vando. If you keep a big he can pull him out of the paint, if you go small he can posterize them. He's going to have be good for the Lakers to have a real at the title

 

Agreed. Vando for his size and athleticism is a weak finisher in the paint. I feel like he is getting stuffed way too often. You don’t see that with Rui, his cuts are almost always automatic scores. His 3’s in the corner are great. If he can be a consistent 12-15 pt scorer we’ll be a better team for it.

It’s a shame his rebounding isn’t top tier, because the Luka, Reaves, DFS, Lebron and Rui lineup is most likely our main 5.

 

No need to show your cards before you really need it in the playoffs .

 

We needed the repetition and our bench needed some meaningful minutes?

 

Honestly, just feel like the team is a bit gassed on top of everything else. An unfortunate (and definitely small in the grand scheme of things given all of the people who are still trying to recover from its impact) impact of the wildfires on the team was our schedule. I saw somewhere that we've played more games in a stretch of a few weeks than any team has in years. Luckily we get a small breather here before the next game.