2026 Playoffs: West Semifinals (1) OKC Thunder Vs (4) LA Lakers

Boils down to insane depth to the point where SGA sits and there's no drop off. Their 2nd unit is the equivalent of an Eastern conference playoff team and their 13th man is a rotation player on most teams in the league.

You can't let up or make any mistakes against them and that's not realistic in the playoffs especially against perimeter defenders like they have. We can keep pace for 2.5 quarters roughly and then the wheels fall off.

Bron and Marcus are going to go down swinging, but this ends tomorrow night.

 

And congrats to all the teams in the league who kept giving them good players at pennies on the dollar. Guess they are all celebrating too right now…

 

Yeah. I was just typing pretty much the same thing

 

You can't beat them in a series with only a 5-6 man rotation;that's for sure.

 

OKC has 2 way players who play both sides of the ball. They have players that are versatile enough to do anything to WIN. Lakers 3 players are more spectacular players as offensive players, but are not good to great defenders. You can see OKC can buckle down on defense on the Lakers depleted roster when the game counts. Even if Luka played, the Lakers offense would had been more potent, they may have outscored OKC in 1 or 2 games, but I would still have OKC winning in a 6 games, because they have players who can do more than score the ball. I'm a huge Austin fan, I want to re-sign him, I will be willing to trade him for only equal or better value in return. No need to panic, Reeves is a great player, he puts his body on the line for you, can make a spectacular shot, don't think he a good fit with Luka who isn't a great defender. I really like Reeves as a player, but with the Lakers personnel, they need more 2 way players to surround Luka to be adaptable enough to win in different ways against teams like OKC and SA.

 

I know that Reaves and Luka can work because I witnessed Luka and Kyrie go to the finals with the proper pieces around them. In no way is Austin a worse defender than Kyrie. He actually has improved in the department of moving his feet and keeping in front of his man.
I get it- people love to pick their whipping boy, every single year.
I just call it as I see it. I was down on Ayton when he was awful, just like I was with LeBron. When they started playing better, they got their flowers.
Yes, Austin hasn’t been good enough, coming back from injury, but he literally would have to average fifty and turn into Amen Thompson on D with Luka out, for us to beat OKC.
It would also be stupid to trade him for spare parts. If you trade him, you better get an as good, or better player in return. Otherwise, you are just solving one problem while creating a new one.
I have yet to see someone here post a realistic trade for AR.
Could we trade him for Giannis? Maybe, BUT we aren’t on one of his preferred destinations and The Greek is a Westbrickian awful fit with Luka.