Optimism Discussion: The Laker's Sky Is Not Falling

With new phase in his career at 37 … best small ball center in the league.

 

43-14 in 29 min?

dang Portland sucks

 

agree. defense has looked better with johnson, reaves, or ariza, much less all three.

would be nice to see how and AD/lebron/johnson/reaves/westbrook group could look.

the big stat from last night was the 7 TOs. that's huge. we'd have won 70% of our games so far if we took better care of the ball, imo.

part of that is portland being just awful defensively. but still, it means we weren't making unforced errors either (i can remember two each from THT and russ, and that was about it that i saw).

 

Our defence is actually decent. For the season we are ranked 12th. The 10 games before AD went down we were a top 4 defence (we also went 7-3 over those 10 games). And over the last 15 games we are the 7th best rated defence while missing a ton of players including AD.

With SJ & Ariza back, we finally have some good wing defenders. So I expect us to be top 5 by the end of the season with AB, Reaves, Ariza, SJ & AD playing quite a lot of minutes.

Oddly enough it’s our offence that hasn't clicked yet. For all the talk of trading our defence away for shooting, we are 24th in offensive rating. So far that’s been a disappointing result.

However we may have found something with Lebron at C. It seems to be getting the best out of him offensively by giving him more lanes to drive and more space to shoot. It also improves our spacing by playing an extra shooter and our role players seem to be benefiting. Lastly, it gives Westbrook extra space too. I’ve noticed we’re also slowing the game down some by going to a Lebron post up quite a bit. We also run quite a few sets off Lebron’s post ups which allows him to threaten with playmaking and not just scoring.

On the defensive side, Lebron and Westbrook tend to roam around too much. Lebron at C gives him structure while protecting him from burning alot of energy in trying to defend laterally. He seems to be a positive defender at the C so far. This allows us to hide Westbrook on the worst player on the other team and take advantage of his defensive rebounding and steals.

So far it’s been an interesting move.

 

i wonder about what it all looks like with AD back. in theory, AD can play the 4 spot on defense and do a lot of the moving around, but the spacing will be back to where it was before (not good).

 

I was thinking when we’re playing small ball it’s LeBron at the 5 on offense and AD on defense?

 

if we face Golden State in the WCF, the matchup to watch will be Draymond on small ball center Lebron. Could be SUPER entertaining.

 

I was close to posting …. so might as well now ….. if Draymond at his shrimp height, with the requisite skills needed, is considered a great small ball center …. what does that calc out to for LeBron when he’s in his “all in” energy modes at the 5?

 

one guy is more defense, and one is more offense

that is what will make it more intriguing. If Draymond can slow Lebron on scoring and make him more of a facilitator, do we have guys who can step up and score? We're currently relying on Lebron for 30 points a night. Might not be possible in the playoffs, but you never know.

 

a lot of the talk has been that lebron's a good fit at the 5 defensively because he can see the full floor from the back and can sort of coach on the floor that way, plus he doesn't have to move as much.

on offense, we really haven't been using him as a post type even when he's been the 5. we've been using no posts, which is why i'm a bit concerned about AD's fit into that offense.

i think defensively, AD is great at the 4 spot. he can stay with wings when necessary, and his wingspan is disruptive away from the basket, too.

on offense, we'd still have the problem that AD, lebron, and russ all really want to score at the rim.

 

Play Lebron at the 5 on defence and AD on the weak side where he is best at. That’s where he can really demolish a teams PnR through help.

On offence I don’t know, but I will say, if Lebron is shooting this well, we’d theoretically have 3 shooters on the floor with AD and Russ. It can work, we just need more time to refine it.

 

yeah, that's the hope. russ/AD pick and rolls with lebron as the outlet/secondary offense guy (holy s***) and a fully nimble/switchable defense.

we haven't had a chance to see it, and honestly, without signing stanley or similar, it may not be possible. but i see the possibility.

 

The good: got the win and showed capability on D in the 4th. Vogel's gamelan survived the game. He's a stubborn man.

 

We won ugly, which beats losing ugly. Also we played some defense in spurts.

 

We won while playing bad!

 

Since I couldn’t watch the game, I was curious how Lebron might do against KAT at center. Checked the box score. I didn’t see KAT or Russell in the lineup, so with the score being close, this is not a super impressive win.

we were destroyed in the paint on offense (Points in the paint) and defense (Rebounding 56-28!)AND played Lebron 39 min to beat a starless team? Ouch.



they took 92 shots vs our 75. Can only get away with this kind of performance against scrub teams. We’re missing AD, but have to think we’ll have to play Howard some soon.

 

We won while Russ played in total probably his stupidest game of the year.

 

Stupidest game so far*