WMC 20-21: Whine, Moan And Complain... You Know You Want To

AD and kcp don't hyperextend knees and we cruise past the suns, maybe giving AD and lebron a chance to heal a bit with any easy series against denver. still think the nets or clippers had a good shot at beating us this year, but we weren't as bad as it looked, and we were only that bad due to season-long injury issues.

 

Well, we were eliminated in the first round.

That's the reality.

The other reality is: we're very limited with what we can do this off-season.

And there's a possibility we could run it back.

 

i guess i'm not sure what that reality without context means. we missed the playoffs entirely the year before we won the title. that was the reality. it was because lebron was hurt, though.

 

Fair enough, which is another reason we might run it back.

 

Give Schroder 25 mil if you can't get something done. Then you have a crap load of money to trade for a star at the deadline if you need to.

3 year, 75 mil, 4th year team option. No one is paying Schroder more than that, not even the Knicks. Also, the Knicks are coached by Thibs, he would throw Schroder in a hole in the ground if he pulls any BS. I doubt the Knicks want a player like Schroder messing with their young core.

 

if no one would give him the money, why would someone trade a star for someone on that contract?

also: NO.

 

NBA trades are money matching money. Not about the talent.

 

The receiving teams have to at least like who they are getting back (not talking about filler) if they are giving up someone of some level of value. Talent certainly enters there?

 

Remaining starting PFs in the playoffs :

- Bogi
- Morris
- Gordon
- Crowder
- Giannis
- Harris
- KD
- Collins (the exception)

Time to end this playing 2 bigs nonsense for us .

AD should start and only play at the 5 EVERY playoffs game going forward

 

i'll go further: he should play center for bulk of his minutes on a nightly basis. if we want to start each half with a big body to wrassle with the steven adamses of the world, that's fine, i get it. but AD is world-destroyer at the 5 and just very good at the 4.

 

I disagree. I think he is at his best as 4 because it creates a mismatch no one can answer. As he is such a good defender, he won't get burn by defending a smaller player. Then we know he can kill anyone inside.
He also avoids the physical battle for rebs and all the boxing out and so on. Get's very physical down there even in plays the bigs don't get the rebounds
He grew up like a guard, don't forget that. It just happened to him to be a 7 footer later, he never trained as a kid for that nor got used to be under the rim.

I thought like you but later last year I started to understand the benefit of having him at the 4 and how comfortable he is

 

i'm not sure we fully disagree in that i think it's best he doesn't have to push against bigger guys for large chunks of games. i just think a center really negates some of his offensive advantages. he's really good in the low-post against smaller guys, but not when there's a center to help. and he's really good facing up centers and getting into the paint--but you can't have people planting themselves there for help. he's not great at initiating offense outside the arc in any capacity, and we end up with that a lot when he's at the 4.

defensively, he's best at 4 but almost as good at 5.

 

Lakers don't have enough shooting to play him at the 4. If you had a mobile defensive center with 3 pt range (Ibaka) you can maybe get away with this but AD at the 5 is the best for Lakers and I don't think it's even close. You gain on offense with better ability to switch, still have an elite rim protector and most importantly unlocks Lebron

The only reason to play him at the 4 during the regular season is to save his body the wear and tear but in the playoffs I see no compelling evidence that the Lakers do better with him at the 4.

 

It’s not like the teams with physical 5s who we face in the playoffs get “less” physical. If anything the banging and what the refs allow against the Lakers gets more intense. AD can get hurt just as easily in the playoffs. IMO you still try to make it work without him having to play down low as much as possible until it doesn’t work and we’re now losing and until crunch time in the 4th quarter. Easy to keep harping though he should give us more minutes there ignoring those physical facts. Vogel mixed it well last playoffs and I expect him to continue. But no clue after what went down at the 5 this year what the 5 personnel looks like next year and how effective it will be.

 

to me, brook lopez is the ideal partner for AD. teams have to respect his shooting on offense, and he's big enough to mix it up defensively. AD at the 4 helps mitigate lopez's mobility issues, just like it did for gasol. i thought gasol was a nice poor man's lopez for us (just like i thought boogie might be a poor man's gasol).

i think my suggestion is that he doesn't start games at 5 unless you're playing a smallball team (like houston last year). but he always plays lots of minutes at the 5, regular or post-season. big, lumbering centers don't play more than 30mpg, usually. you have one guy to eat up half those minutes and AD only has to play some of them. we already do this to some extent.

i don't know. another question might be whether his recent injuries were more a result of grinding (paint play) or of moving and cutting (perimeter). it does seem like the former more than the latter, but it's hard to say.

 

Letting Brook go was Dumb …. thanks for that Magic. He wanted to stay on the hometown friendly deal too.

 

I wish I could find a link but a teams rebound percentage increased with Lopez on the floor despite his anemic rebounding numbers while it doesn't go up with Drummond who has monster individual numbers.

Turns out things like boxing out make a huge difference team wise while getting 2-3 tips on offensive putbacks or your own misses washes out the individual metrics.