Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

Cherry picker with purple glasses on homer.

 

Happy Thanksgiving Laker Nation.
Hopefully LeBron & AD can stay healthy & we can get back on track by Christmas..

 

so...if we defend...we can be good?

 

Maybe. When we go from 2/3 of a squad to a full one and start playing some full grown men against other teams' full grown men instead of telling Bradley and THT hey go check Tatum.

 

Title hopes all lie in Ariza being serviceable lol. Hell I believe he's better then freakin batum and that's what we're asking of him

 

Chandee Brown and Stanley Johnson probably in reverse order, for defense at least, should be too. Let the tall skinny scrub center just have a regular G-league contract since no way (way??) he sees “varsity” time this year, and give that 2-way (way ) to Johnson. Bring them up and try them out randomly on D and give Frank some help here. In addition to Ariza.

 

We're going to win the next 4 games.

 

Wrong!

 

Some hope offensively








It is right there...we need more action with AD in pick and roll.

 

it's incredibly frustrating that we don't involve AD as a screener for russ or lebron on basically every trip down like every other nba team with such players would do. almost all of our good plays down the stretches of games this year have been some variation of this.

then again, i don't know if we ever ran a high screen and roll with trez (whose money comes almost solely from his proficiency there) last year, so what do i know?

 

And most of the time AD when he does pick half a**es it, too eager to move on or just not wanting the contact or unfathomably never having learned how to pick properly?

 

Surprisingly Reeves is a rather productive player and a great fit next to Lebron.

 

Not going to give up till I see Ariza and Reeves getting action: I believe a shortend lineup of AD/Dwight/lebron/Ariza/Melo/Reeves/Russ/THT/Monk can be really good.

Ariza and Reeves really solve some of the defensive issues of having size and defense with some offensive game to the mis.

 

Robin?

 

First real solid game from all of our big 3. THT also impacted the game in the 3rd quarter. Outside of those 4, we didn't get much else from the rest of the roster.

I'm confident we'll have Melo and Monk contributing. But we desperately need Reaves, Nunn and Ariza contributing to round into proper form.

 

I hope, and would imagine, we’ll see Reaves not taking too long working his way back into meaningful, even if not enough yet, minutes in the 4th quarter and generally throughout the game. It has to turn Vogel on and make him a little week in the knees to watch this kid play defense. In addition to every other thing he does so fundamentally well.

 

Like you I’m a big fan of Reaves. I mean he boxes out, how could you not?

 

Positive: we had a great 3rd Q. That's been one of our biggest struggles this season and we ran it up on them in the 3rd. Ball was flying around. Defense turning into offense. Showed what this team can do. Just need to work on sustaining it.

Another plus: the big 3 did what we expect them to do (but often haven't) . All 3 showed up and won this for us.