Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

I watched this play - Durant makes really great driving reverse layup to bring Suns to within 2; AR gets the ball in the backcourt and you expect a swarm and 1.) foul or 2.) steal.

AR is one my guys, but I think Booker had position and AR expected to be fouled, and lost control of the ball in what was mostly an unforced error, and Tom Washington saw Lebron on the other side of the court call TO. The ball was knocked loose about a half second before Washington called the Lakers timeout. It was close. It went in our favor. Among many last-second heartbreaking calls that went against us, I think of Lebron getting fouled against the Bags last year on a last-second shot. The league later admitted they missed it. But we lost. To the damned Bags.

Lakers take the ball out, they foul AD, AD only hits 1 of 2. He ices it by hitting the 2nd. Shades of last year vs. the damned Bags. Durant's long shots were hitting like precision missiles and I half expected him to hit that 32 footer (or whatever it was) to tie it, but noooo.

This time we were the ones who got lucky. I hope AR learns from this one: just make them obviously foul you. You already hit the dagger 3 in smirking Grayson Allen's face to be the game winner...

 

NO is going to be tough. They're like OKC just a lot of bid athletic dudes all over.

Ingram struggles against physical players with length so I'm looking to see Cam matchup against him. Offense can fall apart of they have no iso scoring.

 

Booker body bumped him though, did he not, going for the ball and knocked AR off balance and caused him to lose control of the ball. Sure, can see it both ways, it was a great double team and he might have lost it anyway, but considering the ticky tack we breathe on someone fouls they’ve been calling. Also they touched it last sending it out of bounds from the scrum over the end line.

Then there was Booker lifting his leg behind him in stride earlier to deflect LeBron’s pass they didn’t call, almost falling down from the out of balance position it put him in running ahead of James.

 

it was a clear foul, 9 times out of 10 that foul is called.

 

Bron is also saying "timeout." Ref can't call it the exact fraction of a second Bron calls it (they're not clairvoyants), they have to process and react and whistle.

Suns fans following their "leader" Book and don't a lot of senseless whining.

 

Basketballbreakdown, a known Laker hater, is having a fit on Twitter about this… probably fishing for engagement from Laker fans

 

Wish Cam would've taken that crooked headband off him, held it up to the crowd and yelled "are you not entertained?!" He doesn't have the deep voice Russell Crowe has, so it wouldn't have been nearly as cool but still.

Let's also talk about that one "head hit" where Cam's finger nail came within 6 inches of the top of Book's head and he spent several minutes trying to win an Oscar, trying to sell actual contact.






You know you're a desperate whiner when you're citing Skip. Wow!

 

Just like in every game, there will be calls that don’t go someone’s way.
It’s about time we get ONE in our favor.
More importantly, LeBron is still not getting obvious calls that he should.
If things were to even out in the “fairness of fouls” department, we would have at least 20 more go in our favor throughout the remainder of the season.
I just think there are a lot of refs who don’t like LeBron. I understand the whole “he’s bigger than most guys so it’s hard to tell,” but to me, that’s just a cop out.

 

so the assumption is that phx 100% would have scored on the next possession (that they may not have gotten because they either committed a foul or knocked the ball out of bounds)?

man, we've gotten screwed way worse with nary a peep from the press.

 

mccollum worries me more than ingram now that we have vando and reddish. we're really bad at containing those guys with serious range who can also handle. and in the starting lineup we only have one of reddish/vando right now, so who gets ingram and who gets mccollum? i don't think prince can handle ingram, though i'm guessing that's what we try first.

 

^^^^^^^^^^
This!!!

 

should be Cam on ingram and max on mccollum IMO but it maybe too early in Max's career for this. Feel like he's a year away but by that time may have lost another year of contention with small problems being exposed in playoff like situations. Sigh

 

looks like it was the right call to me

 

You think Max slithers and fights screens better than Cam, Barns? I thought that was one advantage plus the length, hands and anticipation that Cam had on him? But Max is so much better potentially on offense than Cam … he definitely needs more burn and is NOT being brought along just right by Ham.

 

That's called you're f***ed

Yeah, I agree we're more equipped to contain BI. At least CJ isn't super quick at this point. If they stay alert and don't die on screens, I let DLO and Austin contest his 3, send Prince as secondary help if needed and steer him to AD in the post. Max only played 8 minutes against the Suns, maybe he gets a look. I let Cam and Vando handle BI and the hope is maybe Vando's minutes cap gets increased.

I'm more concerned with Hawkins coming in, running all over the court and hitting 8 threes on us. Christie and Cam are really the only two who can maintain that pursuit.

 

No Cam is just a better defender across the board than Max. Cam is just an elite POA defender - he's great at ISO and going off screens. He's better than Vando at this. Vando is a better off ball defender. Cam loses focus while Vando is crazy good at just being everywhere

However playing Cam and Vando is tough on the offense, Max is way better than Prince on defense so the combination of Max and Cam or Max and Vando makes sense but again he's really young

Ideal world Cam and Vando would shot 40% from 3 and the Lakers at that point would have a cakewalk to a dynasty but that likely ain't happening. max's jumpshot looks like it can get there

 

Lebron also got clearly fouled by KD on a drive with 40 seconds left. Would have been his 6th. Don't hear anyone complaining about that.