Game Debrief: What Went Right And What Went Wrong?

Lakers led 63-53 with 1:50 left in the 2nd Q, then played the worst basketball we've seen in a loooong time in losing to DEN, 127-102.

2nd straight loss at home to a team on the road in a BTB.

What went right: nothing

What went wrong: everything after 1:50 of the 2nd Q: stopped playing D; AD out of rhythm, tentative, terrible really. If you told me this guy was a front runner for the MVP and I hadn't seen him play all year, I would watch this and think you must be on ketamine or something. He sucked. It's been a long time, but he made like a sheep and played baaaaaad. (Badly.)

Lebron with 6 turnovers.

Unfocused, lazy passing. Lakers stopped boxing out and got hammered on the boards. If there were two Lakers under the basket on a Nuggets miss, you can bet the one Nugget got the ball and put it in. Lakers didn't get back on D. A lot of the time they didn't even get their hands up on D. Not sure what happened after 63-53 but you have to do everything within your powers to NOT LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN.

I think they should fumigate Crypto just to get the stench of this game outta there.

The Nuggets win their 13th of the last 14 against us. Yea, they have our number but I really think the Lakers were absolute crap in the final 26 mins of this game.

I'm not one of those fans who sees a guy have a bad game and call for him to get traded for picks, but I'm gettin' there with D-Lo, whose game looks awful this year. No sugar-coating it. He's been really, really lousy.

The 3rd Q is now a psychological problem for the Lakers. Not sure if it's on JJ, or to what extent, but something has to be done about the focus, planning, and energy coming out of halftime. DEN outscored us 37-15 and the 4th was garbage.

I got out my crystal ball and swami hat immediately after the game. I dimmed the lights and chanted words from the Upanishads. Finally, Kobe, who I was trying to contact, showed up.

Me: Whoa! Mamba-man! You showed! Ya look good.
Kobe: Cut the crap. That's one ya gotta flush down.
Me: You saw it?
Kobe: Lemme put it this way: I saw enough. Flush. It. Down.
Me: I hear ya. Hey as long as I have you here...
Kobe: Mamba...OUT!

And just like that: he was gone. But he's right. Of course.

 

This team as currently constructed just can’t beat Denver. They’re in their heads.

 

When you are the 26th rated defensive team, you aren’t going to win a lot against the upper tier.
This team has been poorly constructed from the defensive side of the ball since they blew up the Bubble Team.
Sorry, but you can’t just expect to outscore your opponent every night.

 

We were completely outplayed. Everytime we play Denver we just feel powerless. I feel it too, it just seems that they decide when they want to stop us from making any plays and score at will. It seems there's nothing we can do.

Absolutely agree that this group of players just can't beat them but was also expecting more from the team and JJ. They were also without Gordon.

Now we go to a tough back 2 back in Phoenix and San Antonio. Looks like 2 losses in the horizon. San Antonio will also be in the back end of the b2b, so hopefully we can split it. KD and Beal may be back too

 

https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPT...ZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9dg/muh9QSNpwSkUjR4jT7/giphy.gif

We got the Suns game .... NBA Cup

 

KD and Beal back tomorrow. We definitely have the world record of injury guys returning against us
Hopefully we take advantage of some rustiness

This also proves to me that many guys that are out injured only have minor niggles and they are just sitting to endure a long season

 

This whole thing is making me think that there is a lot of inside turmoil going on with our guys. ??? Trades have been on the line for too long, too many players may be bumming with it. Lebron has lost a step.

 

feel like our defense just keeps getting worse, and some of that is attitude.

i agree that dlo and other players knowing that we seem to just be waiting for trade season to open is probably having an effect on the on-court product. i mentioned in another thread that it almost looks like dlo is trying to play his way out of here, the sooner the better. at first glance, i could see it--people are fawning over schroder in another thread, and dlo could definitely put up big numbers and help a bad team win a few games in the process. but he should also understand that nba teams no longer pay for that stuff. there was a time when players could make money off it (antoine walker, etc.), but in the age of analytics, there are no suckers left to buy guys who don't impact winning. ask andre drummond, the nba's greatest rebounder.

doubly frustrating, as dlo buying into his role and performing this year would have been great for us and great for him--as he needs to prove he can be part of a winning team in a bench role if he wants to play past next year.

 

Magical pills that allows NBA players play Lakers should be included in Guinness world record book lol.
Vassell (knee) will not play Tuesday against the Jazz, but he is expected to be available for Wednesday's game against the Lakers, Michael C. Wright of ESPN.com reports.

 

the models should adjust our strength of schedule due to the "laker factor".

 

new coach same stench

 

Re-start Knecht!

 

Lakers play lax D in the first half in PHO after 2 very bad losses (of different types); collapse mentally/effort-wise AGAIN in the 3rd Q, being outscored 36-18, and get blown out. A 127-100 loss in Phoenix. It was effing DISMAL with 5:30 left in the 3rd. They gave up again, and it's obvious some major moves need to be made by Pelinka.

What went right: tumbleweeds blowing through a dead Old West town; all you hear is wind. No humans or horses in the road through town. It's deserted. No "Oh Susannah" from a plinky piano comin' out of the saloon, either. Everything looks hot, dusty, dry, dead. And it is.

What went wrong: the defense is terrible. A sieve, even. A thing of pure dread. The chemistry is bad. Wheels have, at some point (last 2 mins of the ORL game?), fallen off. I saw it in their body language when PHO went up 12, then 14, then 18, and I kept watching for roughly the same reason some people slow down to gaze at the carnage on the 405.

Lebron with careless passes. 18/10/8 but his defense is lax and hurting the team. Also he chucked up some 3s that seemed ill-advised. You have AD on the floor, you get it to him down low. Lebron 2-7 from deep. AR 2-6. Rui made some bad decisions, his D is a step short and he was 1-4 from deep.

Lebron has been looking like he's 39 lately.

Jaxson comes back, dropped at least 3 passes or fumbled them out of bounds, then re-injured his ankle.

AD played really well in the 1st Q, then - for reasons I can't figure out - started to look like he was playing Jokic again, not Nurkic. He is not the MVP this year. He wasn't nearly as bad as he looked against Jokic, 25/15 with a few "old AD" sparkling defensive plays. There's a lot of rhythm in his game I'm just not seeing lately. Not tonight. After the first 5 minutes of the game I thought he should just go for 45 or 50, but the aggressive-on-offense AD disappeared. Hey AD: when you get the ball down low and they collapse on you: it's legal to do a pump-fake. That goes for all of you Lakers.

Dan Woike of the LA Times got this quote from AD:

“Once again we just didn’t score in the third quarter,” Davis said. “And our defensive communication was lax. And they were able to get some open shots and open dunks and shots at the rim. And then, now we got guys in rotation and they’re sprinting out to their shooters for threes. I think our competitive spirit is always there every night. I think no one comes out and says, ‘We don’t want to compete.’ But I think it can look that way or seem that way when we’re just not on the same page because we’re not talking. So we just got to get better at that part of it.”

(source)

D-Lo: 1-6 from 3. He needs to get his mojo back, preferably somewhere else. Trade him ASAP. His D is hellacious. Even his FTs are suffering. Don't know WTF happened there, but I suspect he's a real drag to have on the team now. When he comes off the bench, if you believe in honesty in advertising?: he should be waving a toreador's cape his D is sooo bad.

We could lose to PHO but at least make it a competitive game, Los Angeles Lakers. Our bright young star Knecht was 1-4 from 3 and not only can we not "have everything," suddenly we can't have anything. The Lakers are not having fun and y'all know you're not, either.

This was an extension of the DEN nightmare, and, not gonna lie: I'm almost afraid to watch tomorrow's game in San Antonio. My gawd how quickly this all went south on us, eh?

 

Can’t recall watching a pro team consistently fold in the third quarter like this.

 

Right: AD in the 1st, Austin on the back half of the second quarter.

Wrong: every f***ing thing else from the entire roster. Offense...ha! Defense... what's that? Effort and competitive spirit? Who needs it! Pride... f*** that.

Team is in the holiday fog just waiting for a trade. Hopefully it's soon enough to flip the script and significant enough to spark-n-rally

 

recorded this but didn't watch because i figured this would happen. this is why you don't piss away the orlando game. this was going to be a loss no matter what, imo.

now, the utter gutlessness of the last two games is a SERIOUS problem. it's ok to lose to denver (they own us) and full-strength phx at phx (they've lost one game all year, to us). but to lose by a zillion whilst just rolling over is insane.

AD's comments were strange, too--basically saying that our offense dictates our defense. this is why i hated building our team as an offensive one. we were good when we were a top-5 defense. we could have kept building that way or returned to it after the russ debacle, but we went all in on offense. well, we're a good offensive team!

 

Yeah. I actually thought we could win 3 or 4 of these games but it’s like we have completely collapsed after losing to the Magic. I expected losing to the Suns but not the Magic. We also should’ve beaten the Nuggets as I just don’t think that team is that great outside of Jokic.

Team needs to hit the panic button and play with some urgency fast or we are going to drop all of these games.

 

Hey Lakers ! Miss me yet ?