He will put up 35 against New York. They don’t have the same long, very good defensive wings that Toronto has.
From a raps fan on their board "This game was a result of Nurse's game plan to let the support players beat them. He ignited the entire Lakers team with his inability to adjust to anything but shutting down star players." Seems like that's a theme for the raptors. Selling out to shutdown the stars.
earlier this season embiid said the raptors only care about shutting down the opponent's stars which is exactly what they did tonight, except they failed to shut down the guards. i guess nurse's philosophy is "if we're going to lose, it'll be because their supporting cast beat us"
You're right Embiid: “When you play a team like Toronto, they don’t really care. It seems like, most of the time, they don’t care about winning. They just want to shut down the other star players.” Nurse should be thrilled that they held AD to 8 points.
Yeah I don’t have an issue with AD’s scoring tonight really, they were swarming him with length and other guys were scoring fine. Plus he was huge on defense, had 4 blocks, he did his job.
I noticed this very early in the game, even pointed it out to my wife and she was kind of amazed that the announcers were saying the same thing I had said after 10 minutes. We have the guns now, if the opposition swarms AD or Lebron, the other guys can make them pay. I think DLo is going to be huge for us. He can score from anywhere on the court and he is a threat to drive, then no matter where he goes, he is capable of making a great pass. I cannot wait to see the whole team healthy and have some time to practice together.
So you are telling me you'd rather have Wilt than AD? The guy who played any defense for like one season during his entire career? As great as Wilt was and with all his unbreakable records, no thank you, I rather stick with AD.
Wilt for durability was the only point I just have super high expectations for Laker retired jerseys. AD hasn’t made it yet, but if he helps dominate another run, I guess he had to be in the conversation since Pau was.
We’ve got a supporting cast that can make teams pay for this strategy. Also will be tougher to try this when LeBron is back.
he was still dominant on defense, and because the raps paid so much attention to him, all guards but beasley got a rhythm from all the space.
AD seems a little soft early in games meaning hustle plays. I'm assuming he is trying to avoid early foul trouble
Toronto is a scary team. They got the assets to move on a star and than a lot of good pieces even with a move. Really need to move away from the title and concentrate on putting guys around Barnes that guy looks like a young Lebron at times with his size and athletic ability. This team scared me as the starters did really beat up the Lakers. That's what the win that much more impressive: took it to a team that also had no fear and felt they were better except for Davis across the board
Strangest take on Wilt I have ever heard. No offense, but did you ever actually watch him play. He was dominant in the paint altered a ton of shots. https://kinerd518.medium.com/was-wilt-chamberlain-good-at-defense-e9d20a041998 No disrespect to AD but he has a long way to go to be on his level. In todays game, I have no doubt that Wilt's pure greatness would be diminished as he had no outside game but as a banger, he was pretty much right there with Shaq.
wait.....are we really debating whether we'd take wilt or AD? lol wilt was one of the most freakishly athletic human beings to ever live. i have no doubt he'd still dominate in today's NBA. he'd basically be a 7'1 giannis with a post game and mid-range shot. with today's rules he'd easily average 30+15 a season
ironically, in-shape shaq got beat by prime hakeem, who was interestingly a very similar type of player to the 2020/current healthy version of AD.
^Olajuwon had touch on his shots, footwork, smarts plus he was battle tested. O'Neal was not as polished at the time.