This thread is for your post game reactions and recommendations. Suns game: AD started slow and I was already ticked at him by halftime. Second half he woke up and showed up big time. Just give me that second half AD more often and I'll be a happy man. LeBron's outside shot is still cold, but it was good to see him take over the playmaking and take over the game when it mattered most. Christian Wood = wow, I was shocked watching him turn the game with his boards and D. He just earned more minutes. AR needs to let his summer experience go and get his head fully in this new season. I'm confident he will be ok. Gabe impressed me with his hustle play and infuriated me with his chucking from 3. FreeMax! Coach Ham: I still don't get it.
Nice thread Damn, we played terrible. I was so pissed off during the game. EVERYONE missed open shots. Cam twice, Reaves, Dlo, Rui, Prince, Wood. Wide open. What a curse We are really struggling without LeBron. It's on Reaves who played bad, Rui who only showed at spaces and Dlo, who was the best of the 3. I liked when we went to AD in the Q4 when they were playing small ball, good recognition. And the answer was attacking the paint as anticipated. But we aren't winning against Phoenix full healthy if we miss open shots. We aren't winning against any good team A lot to grow
I don’t see much of an offense- usually it’s one of our guys trying to out-talent the defense. More picks and guys off ball at least cutting to open spaces would be a start. Ham’s rotations are still questionable. Yes, Free Max!!! I don’t get it, he plays really strong D and can do more than just Jack threes. We’ve only played two and Ham is already frustrating me. If only AD could play with fire for four quarters… That being said, his defense, once again, has been excellent.
watched the highlights, and looked like the 4th quarter was worth watching, but perhaps not the rest. Good to see AD being aggressive. When he is, we get results. Too bad he's not wired to be aggressive 24/7. He is who he is.
the defensive energy in the first half was putrid, vomitous. just got outworked all over the floor by a smaller, less talented team. that and all the missed wide open shots made what should have been a 30-point win into a nailbiter in which we were outplayed for 75% of the game and were lucky to win. we played better against denver, and we played pretty poorly against them, too, imo. our guard play has been bad when i expected it to be a strong point. our cohesion has been bad when i expected the continuity to help there. if i'm ham, i start saying i'm going to yank people for not boxing out. we're a big team now and we need to be winning the glass on a nightly basis. never thought i'd say it, but the other bench players need to take a cue from...christian wood's...effort and energy in the last game. rui, in particular, needs to see that even if your iso scoring is what you've worked on, staying on the floor is about playing both ends. lebron's finishing flurry was pretty amazing. he had a pretty bad game before that, imo, but if he's going to take the ball to the bucket to close games, that's a great sign for us. that's his strength, even now.
The good: we won the game. The bad: the game itself. AD slept through the first half on the boards. The team must have thought the concept was to miss the hoop when you shoot the ball. The turnovers and not boxing out were infuriating. Need to stop the iso chucking long 3’s. We aren’t winning many games playing like that and we’re lucky the Suns were missing starters.
Nice thread! From what I was able to see: The offense is stagnant, needs work. AD is inconsistent. Dlo is not that bad, looks impressive physically, but needs to play with more confidence. On the other hand, AR and Rui are not ready yet for some reason. They have no energy, at least compared to last season. Now, Gabe has plenty of energy, hustles on D, passes very well, but can't hit ANYTHING. I think he'll be alright though. Bron's good overall, not much to say there. He does what needs to be done. Wood is quite good actually. Works very well on D with AD due to their length and mobility and is obviously a willing defender for coach Ham. Needs more time to get in optimal game shape. Not worried about him. Ham needs to come up with a consistent rotation ASAP. Some bad, some good.
We look like a team that hasn’t played much together and don’t know what we’re doing as a team. Lots of confusion on offense and defense. I understand why we only played LeBron and Austin in 2 preseason games, and being careful with minor injuries, but this is the consequence of a team implementing 5 out with little cohesive court time. They look like they’re trying to figure it out now when they should have been able to figure it out in preseason.
Maybe it will pay off on the long road but I'm not a fan of the change to 5-out. Continuity was a main factor this year and we kind of threw it away by playing a new system. I don't know enough basketball to understand the benefits of this change, but by common sense it seems to go against the continuity factor that was one of our strengths this year. If we played 4-out last year, were so good post trade deadline and kept the 6-man core, I don't get it. If someone knows how to explain or has a video discussing the benefits of the 5-out Vs 4-out, would love to watch it
Once we finally have the ability to capitalize on continuity, Ham decides to overthink things again, and blow it up. I miss Vogel.
Same thing over and over again. Bad shooting, guard play is atrocious... beyond belief even. Rui did something way too late, took forever to get going. These are people we hoped would take the next step. And they took it, but backwards. That's what went wrong this time. It's going to continue until Dlo, Reaves and Rui start playing better.
Zero shooters. Zero “dogs”. You can just tell (most games), the other team just wants it more because we’re the Lakers and most esp bc LeBron is on this team. Oh and waive Gabe Vincent and eat the loss. We’ll probably go on a winning streak if that happens.
We had some wide open 3 down the stretch to really swing momentum our way. No one could hit a thing. Vincent, Dlo, and Prince missed some huge wide open ones. Bron had some sloppy turnovers.. Reaves can't hit a thing and is looking extremely slow on defense.
I understand the frustration after a loss, but we won’t have both Dlo and Austin shooting this terribly normally. It sucks, but I’m ok with this loss. I don’t think it’s indicative of a real problem with the roster. Growing pains.
Don't like your nickname for him but I have to agree with your conclusion. Such a frustrating game to watch from a coaching perspective. So, our GM said that we might have the deepest team in the league this year. So what does Ham do? He plays the same 5 guys down the stretch of the 4th quarter and then stays with only those same 5 guys for the entire OT. Not one sub. No Rui, no AR, no Wood, no one else. Ham says he needs to keep LeBron around 30 minutes then plays him 40 on the first night of a back to back. We were struggling to rebound the ball late, but whatever you do, don't put Wood in who really helped our rebounding issue just last game. AD is playing well and Sabonis is fouled out and we completely ignore setting him up to work and instead settle for chucking 3s from players whose legs were gone at that point. None of this is genius level coaching. Just basic basketball that is being ignored. Props to AD for playing hard. Props to LeBron for gutting out that long late stretch. Why is Vincent eating 32 minutes while putting up 2 points?!?!? At least put in Reddish whose length might have slowed Monk some. Wood was productive but could not get on the court. Same story for Rui. Frustrating. AR, where's your head at? FreeMax!!!
Why go behind big every game and then start playing hard? Our in game management is terrible, you are playing a team in foul trouble and we settling for 3s,which we are terrible at. LeBron really needs to look at himself, decisions at critical moments have been terrible And ham why take out Rui and Wood? Reaves should have been benched long before he did. He keeps saying we will learn but we don't learn. We got away with it against sun's because they only had 1 real shooter The effort on rebounds and defense is terrible And we fail to take advantage of how the game is going. Not attacking players in foul trouble
We started badly again, we lit it up in the 2nd half again. It's good to see the reaction but a waste of effort. At some point we were 7-15FT which was costing us. Good we got that right. We continue to miss wide open threes. There's nothing the coaching staff can do to help that. Wood was great the first half, surprisingly didn't play much in the 2nd. Rui got it going in the 4th but didn't play crunch time along with Wood, a mistake by Ham there DLo and Reaves continue to be bad, worst game I saw by Reaves. He has no legs, he can't get that first step. Good call by Ham not to play him in the 4th After Sabonis fouled out, Kings had no center and we didn't draw ONE play to AD, terrible. AD was our best player again +++: AD Wood Rui run in early Q4 ---: Reaves DLo Outrebounded in OT without Sabonis It wasn't a good game but we took Sac to OT, who always play their hearts out against us. This team is clearly not hitting, imo mostly because of DLo, Reaves and Rui who were expected to be our collective 3rd star and take a step forward. They haven't raised the level and are actually worse. Still, we were pretty close to win the game. I think that shows that we do have the tools to succeed and it's just not aligned at the moment but with time we should get there. We played very good teams until now I'm gonna avoid reading comments and will just comment my post-game view against Orlando because there's too much negativity around here. "Fire Ham", "trade for Harden", "DLo, Gabe, etc are all horrible players". It's not my thing. We have a good group, with flaws like everyone but we are insanely better than the last couple years. We hoped continuity would be an advantage, but scheme changes and 3 of our 5 highest paid players being underperforming are impacting the full potential of this team. I like this group and this coach, they have all things to improve but that's part of life and sports. I think this group and Ham can win a chip and it's not in the 3rd game that I would be convinced otherwise. Constant turnover has proved to NOT help to achieve success in the NBA so I don't agree with many opinions here. Nor that everything is wrong. Hope we win tomorrow. We might see some rest of the stars, which can open the floor for a few guys and be a good opportunity to showcase.
