True, but at least Smart could have been on him for they crucial final possessions instead of AR and Jake, maybe he gets a stop one of the times instead of doing this
Smart is essential to this team. Without him, our defense sucks, everyone seems out of position, there is no working scheme. I agree, if we keep Smart, we need another POA defender. If we could find another defensive specialist who was still a threat to score, it would make us very tough to beat.
I vote Marky Mark invests 1M or whatever it takes to gather the most elite small group of player skills coaches for strength, conditioning and skills training defense and offense for private clinics through this summer to supercharge development on Thiero, Bufkin, Manon and Bronny (if still here). Manon 5-10lbs stronger could be a beast on D ... and Shirley with someone better than Lethal Shooter could become passable from deep. Bronny another 5-8lbs as he starts "getting ready" to gear up in a couple more years for his prime man musculature (genes from Pops doesn't suck) could be unmovable and make plays all over the floor both sides of the ball with that explosive strength and athleticism and further improved skills. Bufkin 5-10 more lbs and defense optimization (all these guys) with all the "trick methods" .. resistance bands, whatever the H is S.O.T.A. ..... looks like he has the athleticism and coordination to be better than average on D and we know he already has nice skills on offense to polish further. Thiero learning from the best of the best player development coaches can be our OG. He's got the tools and skills and ambidexterity from all the years in HS playing PG and still directing the offense after he grew out of the formal position. Reports were he still set the offense up a lot. Another 5-10lbs souped up physically Adou Thiero would be ...... tldr version .... Walter pays big bucks for best of the best trainers for what we need to start developing the H of his new Lakers "farm system"... the players already in house. While Tony Bennett does the same level of "great" ... scouting NEW talent for the Lakers.
From sporting experience, almost any decent level coach who has a good grasp of fundamentals can help you improve. Less relies on the quality of the coaches (although it's important) and more relies on the hunger and desire of the individual. Sure talent comes into it, no matter how hard you work, an average player can't become an all time great. BUT, an average player can become a rotation player through hard, deliberate practice. The deliberate practice part is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. If Manon, Bufkin, Bronny and Adou want a good career, they should be working their a** off with good coaches. Learning fundamentals, improving their IQ, working on their bodies, recovery, mental fortitude etc. One part where I think quality really matters is in health. Good doctors, physio's, specialists are really critical in keeping people healthy. I've worked with some of the best and it's a night and day difference to average ones. Phoenix had a great staff here, they would work on body alignment and help players have their healthiest seasons, players like Amare, Nash, Grant all benefitted greatly from that staff. We should invest here.
Anything to bring out the best in the young developing players This should be the main focus A quality staff that can do that is worth their weight in gold
interesting insights. it's weird to me as someone who was never an elite-tier athlete (didn't play in college, etc.) that the training/medical teams can be so different. to the novice it would seem that if you're in the business, you're up to date on the knowledge and techniques that are supported by data. in such a case, protocol and treatment would be fairly uniform. then again, my dad has always said medical science is an oxymoron, and i've definitely seen that borne out in many cases. seems like there's some art along with the science, and then some individual discernment that augments the science, and those things carry about as much weight in terms of outcomes.
What??? Medical science is definitely a hard core science between science and medicine. I think the issue is that there are lot of areas where the science is unclear or not well understood or difficult to study (i.e. dietary recommendations - s*** show of low level quality evidence)
what i said. and then you...basically also said. if it's unclear and hard to study, it doesn't carry the connotations typically associated with "science". i understand this as a psychologist--a field that suffers from even greater uncertainty due to similar issues (complexity of the system, imperfect measurement, costly research designs, etc.). my dad was a chemical engineer, and...it's not the same. not close, really. and i'm not a "do your own research" bro in any sense, but if i can ask three different doctors about the same case and get three different answers, i'm dealing in something that is not settled science. and i'm fine with that. science is really just the method we use to gather information and form conclusions. my point here is largely that one medical team outperforming everyone else over a long period of time doesn't imply a settled understanding of how these processes work. if we had that, you wouldn't see uneven results, imo.
I can tell you so many stories on finding edges on the medical / recovery side - it's wild to me how varied results can be. Here are a few: When I had my last major knee surgery (I've had 2 major knee surgeries and 1 minor, 1 minor and 1 major ankle surgery and 1 major hip surgery) I reached out to many different specialists. I had torn my lateral meniscus, my ACL and PCL. Two world leading surgeons advised me they would totally open the joint up with a vertical cut down the knee, dislocate the knee cap and make space for a complete knee reconstruction. They would take ligaments out of my hamstring to reattach them in the knee and cut out 80% of my meniscus being effectively bone on bone. They advised a likely 18 month recovery (if ever). The third surgeon I saw was a young specialist out of Baltimore that had developed his own new cutting edge surgery where he reset the existing ligaments, stitched them up and housed them inside foam until they healed. His initial results were faster recovery, better strength and less invasive than the accepted best practice at the time. On top of that, I was the first person in the world to have a biodegradable vein installed on the interior of my meniscus where there isn't any blood flow for the sake of trying to save my meniscus instead of cutting out 80% of it. He could do all this via key hole surgery (3 minor incisions around the knee). As a result, both my PCL and ACL were reattached while 90% of my meniscus was saved. I couldn't bear any load on my leg for 4 months, but long term recovery allowed me to olympic lifting, train bjj, run long distances, surf, rock climb etc - with zero limitations. A few years after the surgery, I met an incredible physiotherapist that worked out of Australia. He had just been let go by the Olympic team at the time as he had developed a new needle treatment that worked with fascia and nerves that he wanted to pursue exclusively away from general physiotherapy. His thesis at the time (that hadn't been proven) was that the fascia held nerve locks that spasmed and locked muscles down causing pain, lack of mobility and flexibility. He believed that rehabilitation of soft tissue injuries could be cut dramatically (sometimes in half or more). He helped me come back from a 6 week hamstring tear + simultaneous back spasm in 10 days - just in time to make a tournament I was desperate to play in. Since then his treatment has been studied by leading universities and peer reviewed while he has helped many dozens of athletes across the world (European Football, Australian Rugby, Swimming, Athletics etc). After I finished up with sport, I met and worked with an amazing posture therapist out of Arizona (I believe he worked as a consultant for that famous suns physiotherapist staff during the Nash years) that helped me deal with alot of imbalances I had developed from injuries. I went from having flare ups quarterly from the abuse I put my body through to basically pain free for the first time in 15 years. His mentor was also the gentleman who helped Jack Nicklaus initially get back on the golf tour after debilitating back pain. This gentleman was also one of the leading theorists on fascia chains and the impact imbalances in one unrelated region can have on another (example; a problem in your ankle can give you neck pain and migraines). Lastly, when I was visiting a friend in the Czech Republic about 5 years ago, I came across a Russian doctor that was almost like a magician with his physic body work. He worked on my body for 2 hours and reset everything via fascia and joint manipulation. He could pinpoint every injury I ever had and I walked out of that room feeling the best I had since I was 15. Turns out he was a key member of the Russian olympic team for 4 decades and allowed their gymnasts and weight lifters to recover from training loads that would be deemed ludicrous by our western standards. I genuinely believe that finding the best of the best in the medical field could provide a huge edge to the Lakers. The thing with medicine (and to a lesser extent science) is that the accepted best practice today is only there because someone 50-60 years ago introduced it and there are cutting edge things being developed today that will be the standard in 10-20 years. It's a fast changing industry. Sorry for such a long winded post, I've spent lots of my life in this subject.
very interesting stuff! true. and to continue quoting my dad, there's a reason they call it a "practice". going back to the science portion--when important outcomes are on the line, it's difficult to find the best approach. like, if you have victor wemanyama on that table, testing a theory could be incredibly costly for many stakeholders, obviously and most importantly the patient. further, true exploratory/basic research is really difficult--much like psychotherapy--because what you're trying to get it at is causes (of pain, stiffness, weakness, etc.) and what you can test primarily are remedies. that's not the same. if i do something that alleviates a symptom, it may not have actually addressed the cause of that symptom. to truly learn the cause of the symptom, you have to be able to manipulate the causal variables. in medicine and psychology, you basically can't or shouldn't in many cases. and this is why knowledge and practice get regularly updated, in part. the other huge issue (i was literally just discussing this with a clinical psych friend of mine) is the idiosyncrasies in results across people given the same treatments (and even the unplanned changes in treatment course within a single case and practitioner). none of this is even remotely like adding certain amounts of elements to produce a reaction and knowing exactly what and how much will be produced in the aftermath.
@svtzr ….. suggest you email Mark Walter’s / Lakers contact listings the contact information to some of those medical wizzards.
…. and Holy Crap that’s a lot of injuries and procedures from a non contact sport, if most or all were?
I just don't get this type of thinking TBH - there are less well understood areas but to even think biological science is somehow not a science like chemical engineering is absurd. This is like physics being high and mighty and yet they've been stuck for the last 1/2 century figuring out to get quantam mechanics to work with relativity. The amount of hard science in labs done on things from cancer to immunology or neurology has led to innovations like Car T cell therapy, biologic therapies, to implantations are all based by any defintion hard science - cell research to animal models to human trials.
