WMC 20-21: Whine, Moan And Complain... You Know You Want To

Worst 6 Game Win Streak ever...

 

over 40 minutes for lebron in 3 straight games

he needs to sit out a game before they run him into the ground like kobe in 2013

 

The priority should be health , not playing every game to increase your MVP odds ...

I couldn't care less if we finish 3rd in the West , nobody is beating us at full strength .

Can't jeopardize our huge chances at winning a title for meaningless regular season games , it's getting stupid as it can get

 

i agree it's important, but this isn't at all like that kobe situation. he was carrying the entire team every night and having to work incredibly hard to do it. i don't see lebron straining much out there, tbh. would i prefer his minutes go back to where they were early in the season? yes. would i prefer we rest him here and there? yes. but i have a hard time believing he isn't involved pretty principally in these decisions. and again, this doesn't look like the kobe stretch to me.

honestly, playing AD when he was clearly dragging a leg was much more like the kobe situation in that we were gambling the prime of a superstar for stupid reasons.

 

I agree about AD .. I just don't see the point of Lebron playing 40+ minutes for a 3rd straight game to coast during the majority of game to barely beat OKC who was playing without a point guard ...

I would have preferred to sit both AD and Bron , the team would have taken this game way more seriously and a W would have probably happened and if not , no sleep would have been lost .

It's going to the be the same type of game against Grizz tomorrow too if AD doesn't play .

Lebron will have to sit one game and I hope soon .

We are playing every other day until March 4th , won't have a single two days rest and it just happened 4 times since Dec 22nd .

There is too much at stake here ...

 

Lakers have been awful shooting the ball lately. I think there was a stat that the past 10 games, they are ranked 29th in the league shooting the ball. It's to be expected that there would be a decline because KCP couldn't possibly maintain that % but it's been discouraging to say the least. I at least thought the Lakers would still be a top-ten shooting team.

The offense is having a lot of trouble at times. Lakers are now just slightly above average. It does look more stagnant than last season. I don't think Schroder has done a particularly great job distributing the ball. A lot of clumsy plays that end up with the Lakers taking a horrible shot because they run the shotclock down and struggle to find a shot.

Lots of room for improvement. I think this team is 75% of what it should be. Anthony Davis not being at his best is clearly something that has to be addressed and hopefully, it stems from the injuries he is dealing with.

With that being said, the Lakers are #2 in the NBA standings without being close to at their best. We've had a fairly easy schedule so time will tell on how good the Lakers can be vs opponents that are elite. Only teams that could realistically challenge the Lakers are the Nets, Clippers, or Philly.

 

I agree to an extent but some of this chicken and the egg: they have generated quite a few open looks to Kuzma and KCP and they've simply missed. Regression to the mean but I think this reverses itself and the Lakers get back to an above average 3 pt shooting team just from the quality of shots

AD is obvious but losing Caruso hurts as well: you lose another guy who will hit the open 3, cut hard, and create easy fastbreak oppurtunities

 

yeah, i need more data on the offense. i feel like we're getting the same shots and just missing a pretty alarming proportion of them. kcp's in a slump, kuz just started a slump, AC has been out. we're lucky it came at a soft spot in the schedule. i find it hard to believe that the open to the season was that flukey, shooting-wise. we've got a lot of guys perfectly capable of shooting 40% from three.

 

Schroeder nots a good distributor so if he's not scoring it limits the offense.

I think the second half of this year or maybe next year, THT is going to help with this. He's got the right instincts and he forces teams to rotate. Right now though he's still adjusting as teams start getting more film on him. Last night missed some shots he could have made and then forced things too much. I think with more reps, though, he's the one guy who can take this team to another level on offense

 

i really think a lot of it is making open threes. when we do that, we murder people. when we shoot ok, we win 3/4 of our games. when we shoot like a 4th grade team, we have to ride lebron to victories over det and okc.

 

Watching OKC, I was like man Horford would look great on the Lakers. Great fit with AD or in AD-less lineups.
Then I looked at his contract.

 

he'll get bought out and go to the nets.

 

Yeah, I was thinking about that as well. Pretty much a better version of Ibaka.

 

I was thinking the same but he has 2 more years after this year each at 25 million+! That would be a massive buyout and hit to OKC's books this year

 

I don't think Horford would agree to a buy-out. He's not getting anywhere near that kind of money and the odds that he wins a title outside of being on the Lakers, Clippers, or Nets are slim. I never got the impression Horford really cared about winning, anyways. To him, winning is probably just making as much $ as possible.

 

yeah, i was joking. that's just the story about everyone right now.

or...he'll get bought out late next year, join a contender, have his cake and eat it, too.

the guy i didn't understand for buyout rumors was drummond: he's young and it behooves him to get one more big deal, and having bird rights facilitates that. why give them up to ring-chase when you're not even 30?

horford won't get another big deal after this one, so when he's in his last year, he'll probably get bought out.

iow, horford's made his cash--it just doesn't make sense for okc to kill that much money by terminating him a year only.

it makes little sense for cleveland or drummond to do a buyout there. in fact, if it happens, i'll suspect foul play somewhere.

 

Counter argument to this from Drummond's agent at least not sure he would agree with this is that he's considered a bit of a cancer and not a winning type of player. This completely earned as he has a lot of pre Laker Dwight in his game. Wants a ton of post touches, black hole and just won't stick to rim running and the glass.

So if I was his agent if he can get on a winner and prove his value it would help with his next contract as teams may not look at him the same way

 

That would be a problem for the league if that happened. I would be worried in the finals against them if Horford was on that team.