Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

It was a great example of what we could expect in the playoffs i.e Luka and Lebron playing target ball AND controlling the pace .

Our defense was great and very disciplined too .

 

When teams try to meet Luka at the 8 second line and double him, watch how often D F-S, Rui, Gabe, or AR eventually get a pretty open look from 3.

Just gotta knock 'em down. Today they did. An understatement. 15 made 3s in the first half!

 

OKC have gnats for defenders pesky and irritating but Luka is the windshield that they ran smack into

 

yeah, i laughed last year when everyone was suggesting dort bothered him. nobody bothers him. no, not even jaylen brown (who has just benefited a couple times from luka being injured and his team being ice cold from the field).

this is why teams resort to the doubles far from the hoop. we may see some team dare him to score 60 again, but folks have gotten burned that way. you could argue that in a couple of our losses (most recently to gs), kerr was playing with that particular fire early, and when luka was off, his plan worked. i wonder if he'll dare it in a playoff series and whether he might regret trying it.

i also wonder if ty lue will continue to send zubac to slaughterhouse in this manner like he did in dallas. their theory seems to be that if luka shoots too much, his teammates get cold, and luka can't outscore you himself. first, the latter is basically possible, and it's another parallel to kobe and the way teams sometimes played him. the bigger problem is that if luka gets you a 15 point first half lead, lebron and AR are there to hold on to it.

there may be games where you gamble on luka being cold early and you jumping out to a lead you can hang onto, but i think that's a dangerous strategy.

 

we're not always going to shoot over 50% from 3. Not going to get too pumped up about this, but of course it's very encouraging.

 

One of if not the favorite win of the season. The other ones up there IMO are the win @Denver and the win @MSG right before the Luka trade. This is the game where we finally saw just how devastating having two big-wing sized elite playmakers in Luka and LeBron can be. It breaks even the best defenses. They can do everything right positionally and have very good individual defenders, but Luka and LeBron can just create passing lanes over those guys or just shoot over them. Dorian had one of the best games from a Laker role player in recent years IMO, just awesome stuff.

 

we're definitely not. but my goodness it was nice to see it even once! what's terrifying for opponents is that if we have one of these in the playoffs at your house, you might be toast.

it would be good if we could demonstrate this capacity one more time so that it's in the back of opposing coaches' minds when prepping for a series, too. the recent success packing the paint against us came in part due to just abnormally bad shooting, imo.

 

These shots are so wide open though (I mean the non Luka step back). The shots these roleplayer guys are getting are so open that you can drive a mack truck thru the barn doors and you'll still have space.

The 3 stars take tough 3's but this was the hope of having a very unusual combination of 3 true playmakers - get such open shots that the calibre of shooter doesn't have to be as high to have an extremely potent offense. I think in you're basically hoping if you're the Lakers in a playoff series you'll have one insane Luka game, one insane Lebron, game, one insane AR game, and one Lonnie Walker game from a roleplayer and that should get you 4 wins. If you get some of these in combo the series ends quickly

 

We have a pretty damn good playoffs caliber team IMO. It's going to be difficult to beat, a healthy Lebron/Luka combination, with Austin spearheading the rest of the crew, in a 7 game series.

 

Also, even if you take away 8 of our 3 pointers, we still would have won even if we shot 35% from 3.

 

The defense they play requires a lot of energy; I'm wondering if some of that has contributed to some off nights.

Either way, the west is brutal, and it will be a challenge no matter what.

JJ has done a masterful job navigating through this season. I'm confident going into the PO's with him at the helm. I'm sure he will have his bad moments, but I'd rather have him than Ham, and I'm sure most if not all of the aboard would agree with that opinion.

I'm ready for these PO's. I think we have a shot and more than a punchers chance.

Let's lock up the third seed and go to war...

 

36 of the 40 3s were considered "open. " that's crazy.



Jalen...

 

he should get more calls...for his armbars.

 

Offensive fouls, refs know it but they are corrupt

 

Refs decided OKC wasn’t losing this one.

 

Lebron ridiculous turnovers, some of them straight passing to no one, to the other team… multiple unforced turnovers that made me want to scream out in the neighborhood.

AR was solid, but missed multiple key FTs.

Luka’s 2nd tech sparked OKC and they never looked back. Once Luka got that first tech, he should know better than to talk to anyone (fan or not). Esp w that ref RIGHT in the line of sight of the talking. Luka’s fault IMO for putting himself in that position. First tech was stupid too bc he was complaining when we were building momentum and Vando was wreaking havoc and being our best player (we were up like 4 at this juncture)

The only positive??

lakers came back from being down. Had a 6 point lead at one point. Vando needs more minutes. He’s an absolute monster. He sparked us in so many ways with our comeback. Straight up hustle, determination, work, effort, heart. Gobbled all the rebounds, second chances, switched everywhere. Had like 10 Rebs in 11 mins at one point. Love you Vando. Thank you for what you brought tonight.

 

I hate Shai those off ball arm bars he throws us such a b******* move.

Also did league make hand checking legal again under the table because OKC roughed up ARs dribble all night

 

That ref should be removed from the big games. That is malpractice.

Even if he thought Luka was yelling at him, once he figured out that Luka was just responding to a fan, he should have just revoked that tech.

This is why the NBA is losing ratings... a top 10 game of the year with a possible WCF matchup and you have the ref interjecting himself to ruin the game.

Lakers still had a chance to win but I felt like they just felt dejected after that and played flat.

Total disgrace. Silver needs to do something about these stupid techs. Players taunting each other is an automatic tech these days...