Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

Those injuries completely derailed us, unfortunately. There were still a few very winnable games in there that we blew that bugged me, but I'm glad we seemed to have turned the corner and gotten back to our early season type play. We are competitive again and it's crazy to think that even after such a terrible drought in December we are still in the playoff hunt! That's pretty nuts actually.

 

Absolutely Not, and if any one thinks that the Lakers FO our Head Coaching staff wants to tank or is leaning that way they are full of it.

There has not been a single time this year I have thought this team is trying to tank. Not with Luke at the helm and our guys guys starting off to a 10-10 record.

I don't care what anyone says, you can't convince me. This year and the years going forward at about developing a culture of winning and finding talent and guys to make it happen.

 

Actually I think it was because they're not Laker fans, don't watch games, and just look at box scores. I'm not sure they even realized how close we were to making the playoffs. Jorge is supposed to be an NBA guy, but I bet he would scoff at the idea of us being as good as the Blazers. We're probably not, but we came close to beating them in their house with them at full speed. We're not as far off as casual observers would like us to be.

I agree completely. To me this season feels more like the Thunder with Westbrook and Durant in 08 going 7-33 to open the year and finishing 16-26 afterwards. Not necessarily the win totals themselves, but the fact that young talent needs to learn how to win games before things turn around. This team has lead or been close in the 4th quarter how many times? We've lost by 10 or less points 13 times this year which is literally half of our losses. We've lost by 5 or less 4 times. That's not even counting games that are generally close, but end up in blowouts as the young kids falter. It's not counting games where we've been tied or had leads in the 3rd and 4th quarters.

We're right there. We're really very close. This isn't a tank year despite our record.

 

Don't know if anyone else already said this, but when you have a bunch of young players that you project to be a solid core to build with, purposely tanking is just teaching them how to accept and succeed in losing.

These players need to learn how to win games. The habits that lead to success. Young players don't just flip a switch and all of a sudden unlearn all of the crappy habits they picked up when winning didn't matter.

Most of our core is 2-3 seasons in. You can't have solid core of players learning how to lose for 2-3 seasons straight, and think another season of losing won't affect them.

 

I thought this was obvious to everyone to start the year. Glad for the most part people agreed we never have or will think about tanking this year.

 

I strongly agree with this. There's no more tanking for us. Yes, we'll lose some games due to bad D, injuries, young coach etc. but we're not teaching these young players to lose. They need to be hungry, playing the best they can right now. No excuses. And if we don't win many games, that's OK; develop young guys, see who fits with Luke's vision and who doesn't and always try to add someone good in the offseason.

 

Tanking is the worst. Losing is never ok.

Remember us losing every preseason game at the beginning of Mike Brown's 2nd season? Everyone kept saying "it's okay, just preseason" and then we lost 4 of first 5 to start the season and that was it for him. Was he a good coach? No. But he was a lot better than D'Antoni and B Scott. The "it's okay to lose" mentality is a disease that is tough to shed. Look at half the teams in the league who have never been to the Finals. Philly has been tanking forever and I don't care how many #1 picks they get. The culture has been created. Good luck with that.