Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

Yeah does bitter/hateful George show up today with ANYTHING to say?

 

Great game (next to the Knicks one, best i've seen this season).
If it wasn't for these CHA and Jazz blunders, we would be 2nd in the west, crazy.
JJ is better than i thought he would be and i was a fan and an advocate from the moment Ham got the boot
It's good to be a Lakers fan again, so much hate from all over and it's DELICIOUS

 

still just quite happy we played one of our best games against that team in that building.

 

What were the Nugs against us on their home court? 14-0 over the last 14? I watched every one of those, and they were painful, as you all know. Esp the playoff games: we're in it, we're close, then in the last 5 mins DEN (and esp Jokic/Jamaal) kick it into a higher gear and: another Laker loss.

The TV crew often goes to the riff: there are Laker fans all over the country. They'd show a few in DEN, concern, solemn looks, surrounded by rabid Nugs fans.

Yesterday the Laker fans came out in force, and it was deeee LISH to see them at the end, extensive patches of P&G in the crowd, the Nugs fans having left with their team down 20.

It's just a reg season game. Not the playoffs. But this Laker team KNOWS it can beat DEN now. That makes all the difference.

 

I think it's a statement game for us.
Shows the team that we can win the West and will be a catalyst for the rest of the season.
We may struggle in the next games, this one went perfectly but there will be matchups we won't be so prepared or have the personnel.
Teams will also start to study how to counter us and we will have some off games.

But this game has shown the team we have it. And that's amazing.

 

This team presents a really interesting question to opposing teams. How do you defend us?

We have 3 excellent iso scorers that can run the PnR to a really high level in Reaves, LeBron and Luka. You’re basically going to have two top tier playmakers on the floor for all of 48 mins so we’ll get consistently good looks.

Teams usually don’t have 3 excellent man defenders to throw at them. Imagine being Lebron and getting the second best defender on the opposing team. Or Reaves who has the third. They’re too good offensively.

If one of our guys goes nuclear and you’re forced to double team them - you’re leaving one of the following shooters open:

Gabe: 38.8%
Rui: 41.4%
DFS: 41.3%
Lebron: 44.1%
Reaves: 36.5%
Luka: 35.4% (pre trade)

Gabe, Rui or DFS will punish you if you leave them open. But that’s a better choice than leaving one of Reaves, Lebron or Luka open - which is just a recipe for disaster as they’ll get a good quality shot every time.

When we play Vando for 15-20 mins, he creates enough disruption defensively that his offensive issues won’t present much of a problem. Hayes is a lob threat that any of our playmakers exploit in the PnR if they get doubled.

I’m interested to see who defends us the best. Maybe Boston that have positive defenders across the court. But we’ll still be playing mainly 1 on 1 and I trust Luka and Lebron to win that battle more times than not over a 7 game series.

 

lol, i remember after luka hit that crazy toss up after he'd been fouled nine times and slapped his arms and the fans behind him are all screaming to sit down fat boy. just awesome on several levels.

also--they...do know..that jokic is also very fat, right? i just remember thinking...he's right over there and can hear you!

 

Lakers probably don't pull this game off if Mavs had their centers and AD.

Gotta be a lot better than that.

The defense took a step back tonight big time.

I hope the Mavs face off OKC or Nuggets... Those dudes come to play.

 

Fugly game.
Lakers and Lebron finally took it seriously in the last 3 minutes and pulled away easily.

Nice to see the Lakers have that extra gear but felt a lot harder then it had to be. Seemed like they like everyone else expected Luka to go off on a heater and when it didn't happen they were all flat. JJ after a great coaching job made some real weird decisions: leaving Lebron with Gave, Vando, DFs, and Godwin went as bad as you would expect for example

PGs hunting Luka remains a problem (Ball and now Irving)

 

Not a big deal to me that it was a close game it was obvious they played down to the competition if AD plays I don’t think we necessarily lose this game. The guys would’ve been a lot more focused and played with more intensity defensively like they were against Denver.

 

They didn't really play down, they just couldn't hit shots and then they started pressing.

 

I disagree it was obvious to me their defensive intensity wasn’t the same as against Denver and they were too Luka centric for the first three quarters. This game should’ve been a blowout, but like I said it’s not a big deal you have to win ugly sometimes.

 

I really like these kind of wins. It shows just how much better we are than Dallas. We hit a few more shots and this is a blow out. LeBron getting easy buckets off the attention to Luka. After the Denver win we were off mentally a bit we had enough. If AD played we would still have won. We would of put in whatever effort was needed. Give Dallas credit for showing up but we weren't going to lose.

 

They were missing open 3's in droves in the first half. Had they hit 3 more three pointers in the first half, they would have taken their double digit lead to 20. That would have changed the momentum of the game in favor of the Lakers.

 

DAL played really well considering they lacked AD/Gafford/Lively but the Lakers still win 107-99.

Luka still not shooting up to his general level. Still: a trip-dub: 19/15/13 with 3 steals and 2 blocks.

With this new chemistry, Laker players are getting wide open looks from the arc, but they gotta knock 'em down. Only shot 27% tonight. But only jacked up 40 of 'em, not 50 as they have lately.

Klay reminded me of his GSW years. Kyrie was an absolute wizard, but we're now 15-4 over our last 19 games. Two of those 4 losses were sleepwalking games vs. CHA and the Jazz.

Max looking good in his minutes, but my favorite play of the game came pretty early in the 1st Q, when Max drove to the rim and Rui stuffed him with a block, then said some words to his friend/ex-teammate Max as he was on the ground out of bounds.

I think we're all waiting for that game where Luka has 30 at halftime. It may take awhile. Whatever: I'm actually thinking we have a chance this year.

 

Interesting stat:

https://www.espn.com/nba/standings/_/view/expanded

Lakers have the 5th best record against teams with a record .500 and up.

8 straight wins against teams .500 and up.

This team has been playing like one of the best teams since January.

 

i've only seen the first half so far, but i felt like both teams were missing some pretty good wide open shots.

i thought we were going to run away with it early, but i think kidd saw that he was going to have to blitz luka early and did so in the second quarter. in theory, we should kill that, but our side hasn't really seen that much yet. they will in heavy doses going forward.

anyway, my general thought in the first half was that if a couple threes went down, dallas might have packed it in. instead, we got lazy to end the half and christie hit a couple threes, and it's a game again. when i went to bed, i was still expecting a win, just not a blowout, and i guess that's what happened.

gabe and DFS have to hit the open threes.

again i'll have to watch the second half, but i felt like they tried to go after luka in the first half without much success (a block, some steals, and a couple good contests, only a couple blow-bys and none for direct buckets). he even played the kyrie isos pretty well, tbh.

 

Tough game that I mainly attribute to emotions on both sides. We got just enough to win and sometimes it’s just like that.

Honestly just glad we actually won one of these types of games and didn’t let Luka lose his first game against his old team.

 

Sometimes it simply comes down, to who's healthy in April.

Dallas with AD is going to be a problem. Golden State is too. I predict that 2 of the top 4 seeds, will fall in the 1st rd. Possibly 3 if we end up 5th.We have a legit shot this postseason IMO.