5 Things: By the hair of their chinny chin chin

Talk about making the path forward more difficult than it needed to be. While a win might be a win this one took more out of the team than many, myself included, hoped for or thought it would. The Lakers, after being down 15 in the 3rd quarter, found it within themselves to fight for the better matchup and desperately needed time off. In the end, and in overtime, the Lakers beat the Timberwolves and are the 7th seed for the 2022-23 NBA Playoffs. Let’s dig in.

1. D-Lo’s disappearing act was almost too much to overcome. Credit the coaching staff for basically benching him down the stretch as D’Angelo couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with his jump shot, couldn’t get into the paint to score effectively and really turned in a pretty awful performance. He semi-atoned for his own personally abysmal offense by dishing 8 assists to 1 turnover but this will be something to watch going forward. Russell is an unrestricted free agent and while regular season numbers matter, playoff numbers generally count for more. D’Angelo will only damage his own value by turning in more playoff duds.
2. Dennis picked up the PG slack. He had an injury scare in the first half when it looked like he came up gimpy after a fall but he soldiered through and left it all on the court. He was the catalyst for the comeback and OT win by getting to the line, hitting 3-4 from three point land, and playing great defense. The mirror opposite of D-Lo’s game, Dennis did nothing but boost his value by turning in a gem of a playin game. The rest will only do him and our other vets who are nursing injuries of one kind or another good.
3. Rui Hachimura reprising the Kyle Kuzma role for the Lakers. In our banner winning season Kyle Kuzma was the perfect Swiss Army Knife the team needed. Providing a little bit of everything from scoring inside, shooting the three ball well enough, to defense and just flat out playing hard every minute he was on the floor. Rui played that role to perfection last night and here’s hoping he has more of it in him. We need a consistent scorer off the bench besides Dennis and the list got shorter for who qualifies when we moved Reaves to the starting 5. Beasley is too eratic to be counted on, you basically just hope he’s hot. Wenyan is not a scorer. Bamba is a defensive liability against mobile bigs/small players and doesn’t look, to me anyhow, to have playoff speed or intensity in his DNA. Having a guy like Rui who can pretty much switch onto almost everyone and give them a defensive problem of some kind is a luxury the Lakers lost when they traded Kuzma. Rui, whose defense was one of the bigger question marks when we traded for him, has shown he can rise to that role and we’ll need him to do it more as we go along.
4. How well does Reaves game translate to the playoffs? The high IQ plays across the board, the defensive intensity he brings does, too. But the way he generates offense these days (often by floating into another player and creating contact on jump shots) isn’t a playoff friendly style. Just ask James harden whose FTA’s dry up come playoff time. I’m sure there will be a game here or there where Austin gets that whistle but he’d do just as well by honestly attacking the rim and the paint. He also needs to be a lot more decisive on his drives because the ones that fail (and there were a few last night) are the one’s where he’s driving without already knowing what he’s trying to do. These are his first tastes of the bigger NBA stage and so I expect him to add adjustments and grow over time.
5. Winning without free throws. This is a hard one, and maybe it won’t matter, but I feel like the Lakers rely on free throws a lot to win ball games. This was, again, the case last night and we all know that as the playoffs wear on the whistles sound less. Now, because of the Lakers style of play, we may still end up on the plus side of the free throw line battle but it’s not a stratagem that’s entirely within our control. We need to play better all around defense and execute on offense at a higher level. We can’t have our starting guards and power forward go 5-24 and expect to earn a W every night. That won’t cut it from here on out and the Lakers are lucky KAT faded and Anthony Edwards never got it going. Some of that was good D, some of that was on poor defensive decision from KAT who should have known his team needs him on the floor but, as a team, we’ve really come to rely on free throws. it’s not a workable means of winning going forward.

Next up game 1 against Memphis on Sunday. Same applies across the board. Just because Steven Adams is out indefinitely isn’t an excuse to sleep walk through the first half. The team needs to dig down and figure out a way to play with a solid effort for the full 48 and we need more than 2/5s of our starting five to have good games. if we don’t this series will be both short and embarrassing.