Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

We got a young, athletic center to be a vertical threat and a shotblocker. We shot better from outside and started dominating again. Lets see if we can continue this focused shooting.


And Schroeder makes a huge difference in general!

 

Excellent blow out revenge win v the Warriors! A full fourth quarter of garbage time.

 

What a fun game tonight! Love the 30 point blowout in their house. Trez Kuz and THT just dominating off the bench. Team shot over 60% tonight!

 

AD who, right?

 

It was a blast to watch

 

And 58% overall with a season high in assists! These past two games have been a lot of fun.

 

The last few games have been great. I love winning.

 

I’m not sure where to put this but I think overall the Lakers are in good shape. So it goes in the optimism thread. I looked up our overall team numbers to get a better idea where we stand after ASB compared to other top teams and here is what I found.

Defense

We are now #2 in defense. Only team in front of us is the Knicks. I think this is really good considering how many rotation players that have missed game recently.



Our field goal %


5th in the league at 48.6%. We are ahead of Clips, Utah, Phi, Den. Considering how badly we’ve shot from 3 this is impressive. The Bucks and Pels are just .1 ahead of us and the Suns .3. So we could easily be number 2 or 3 without changing anything. The only team we aren’t going to catch is the Nets.



Point differential


4th at 5.9. This is ahead of teams like Bkn and Clips. This is the stat that really counts. We are never going to outscore
teams like the Nets. We have to count on our defense to win games for us.



Blocks


2nd. Only team in front of us is Phi.



Rebounds


8th. Most of the teams ahead of us are nobody’s, Magic, Pels, Knicks, Hawks. The only teams that are ahead that matter
are Bucks, Jazz and Phi. I’d love for Marc to get a few more rebounds a game to up this number but I’m not really concerned about being in 8th place here.




Opponents 3 Point %


6th. This is a huge category. People are constantly saying our team is getting lite from 3 and the numbers say otherwise. These are the teams that are ahead of us....Knicks, Hawks, Suns, Bulls and OKC. As you can see the only top team ahead of us are the Suns. It’s not like we are going to meet the Hawks in the playoffs.


Now here’s the ugly


Our 3 point %


21st at 35.5. We are pretty much right where we were at the end of last year percentage wise. This is the one of the categories I really wish we were doing better in. We’ve been going through a giant slump but the last few games have been better. Some of the players like Wes, that we bought in to help with this have just not panned out. I still think KCP, Kuz, AD and Bron will pull up their season averages as the season goes on. If there’s someone on the buyout market that can help, I’d be open to it but I’m not giving up our young talent to get them. We were good enough to win the championship last year shooting this same percentage during the regular season. Will it be enough this year?



Free throws


25th at 74.9% and tied with the Bucks. This is just giving away free money at the line. Just make a few more a game and we can really up our %.




Turnovers


25th. Bron has always turned the ball over at a higher percentage then I would like. Dennis has been pretty bad lately too. I’m hoping it’s the lack of practice time and all the new guys on our team and it will get better later into the season. I don’t ever think we are going to be great at this but if we could just move to the middle of the pack, that would help a lot.



That’s it as far as numbers are concerned. We are far from perfect but overall I’m happy where we are right now. As the next few months play out I’m hoping to continue to grow as a team and get more comfortable with each other. Then go into the playoffs healthy and let the chips fall where they may.