Difficult to tell how much of that is playoffs vs regular season. He was the best Laker on Murray of all people and even against Denver I don't see Gordon taking him 1v1. Wiggins had a good game 5 but didn't really go off on the Lakers either.
right--i said consistently. for possessions at a time, he can do it. just like for a couple possessions AD can guard KD. but you need more than a couple possessions to get to winning time.
I feel like we didn't address the problems Denver presents to us in the offseason. And I generally really liked our acquisitions. But we still can't stop Murray OR Joker. You have to take at least one of them away for some of a playoff series. You'll never totally stop one or the other but right now we aren't slowing either one down at all. Got to take something away from them there. Maybe Biyombo is the solution. Still have that last spot available.
i know i'm in the extreme minority, but i think beating denver is a matter of dlo not completely choking. i think that changed the whole way they could play us. i agree that having a beefy center to wrestle jokic for about 12mpg would be helpful, but i also think they got off easy on defense because dlo was sorta like having russ back in that series (again, not in the exact same way, but in the sense that they basically could just take one thing away and he crumbled). there's no real answer to jokic defensively. he gets large numbers efficiently against everyone and everything. and murray can go nova like he did, but had we made a few more shots or committed fewer turnovers, we win some of those games and things get tight for denver's role players.
Yeah for all the Jokic talk it was Murray totally outclassing Dlo and even Schroeder (Dennis just not big enough to contest Murray) that won them that series. And this is in no way a knock Jokic - he was clearly the best player in that series but between AD and Lebron and Rui and AR the overall production from the frontcourt and wings was in balance the Lakers favor except at PG. By far the big gap was at the PG spot.
I agree that having an effective DLO vs Denver would have made a big difference, but why not want both? I agree that nobody is going to stop the Joker, BUT you give your team a much better chance of winning by having a guy guard him well enough to not get completely owned.
Who’s the guys these days that can be said about? Lakers obviously didn’t think Bismack was the answer. That we had any real path to acquiring?
Steven Adams is my 2025 target. Prior injuries at that point don't bother me because his game doesn't rely on athleticism, he just has to show next season that he can stay on the court and this isn't the new norm for him.
Bismarck Biyombo is pretty much washed. Phoenix couldn't even play him against the Flippers or Nuggets, in the playoffs. This while the Suns were hurting for bodies period. I fail to grasp what benefits, he would have brought to the Lakers. I still like Gafford in Washington, as a reasonable trade option.
We're not outscoring Denver , way better POA defense and better off ball D on split cuts is what we need I think the main problem is that KCP shoots like prime Klay against us , we're not beating them as long as he's shooting like this against us . We got swept in a series : Bron averaged 27.8 on 51.9% shooting despite bricking from 3 (7/26) AD averaged 26.8 on 49.3 % Austin averaged 21.3 on 55/56/100 splits Rui averaged 15.3 on 53.3 % We shot 21 more FTs than them and convert them at a 85% rate as a team !
I like Gafford a lot, but if we're looking for muscle that ain't him. And Bismack isn't washed. He has defensive metrics last season in blocks that were 2nd in the league, only behind JJJ.
He had those same metrics while getting trashed in the playoffs, by Zubac and Jokic. He's too small for those guys, I don't see how he would help us. There is a reason that he was unsigned, even with those metrics. I'm not sure that we need a big bruiser. An active body guy with a little size should be enough. Gafford is bigger than Wood or Hayes, but he's not a stiff. I think that he's an up and coming young big.
And D'Angelo avg 6pts and 3 assists while shooting 17% from 3 against Denver. We are talking about a guy, that was avg 17pts 6 assists and was shooting 40% from 3 last season. That is a huge drop off. Hell yeah we could have outscored Denver, if D'Angelo would have been at least average in that series. That's why we got swept.
Awful take. Just don’t respond to my posts. Keep saying everything that happens with the Lakers, boils down to how many games AD and LeBron play. We love to hear a broken record.
except we won a bunch of games without lebron after we finally had a successful westbrook operation in february. it's not ALL about AD and lebron's health. the title shot is. the day-to-day experience of being a fan most certainly is NOT. that said, i'm still saying that if dlo is just sub-average by his own standards, we're winning a minimum of two games. factor in the huge psychological advantage they had once they realized that dlo was going to wet the bed, it might be the series. i'm a defense-first guy, as is well-documented around here, but no defense was stopping some of the shots murray hit. we literally just needed to hit like, five more open shots, and murray's heroics wouldn't have mattered.
Christ didn’t Jokic alone sling 3 from from behind his head from super deep to beat the clock and or quarter’s end that went in? They were insane shooting the ball even beyond Murray and Joker.