5 Things: Loss to Nuggets takes backseat to AD injury

The news coming from the medical evaluations seems to be trending positively in regards to Anthony Davis’ calf strain. The loss to Denver and the warts it revealed played a distant second fiddle to the Lakers star power forward’s injury. This train will have a hard time reaching it’s destination without a healthy (or at least consistently contributing) AD. While we did end up winning against Minny it’s safe to say this team still has a lot of work ahead of it.

1. Time for a change at the 2. In my opinion we need to switch KCP out of the starting 5. Teams are closing out on his shot, running him off the three and he seems incapable of adjusting. While his current stats are still pleasing to the eye they’re all way down from his torrid start. He’s not really making up fir his lack of offense on the other end of the floor, either. I think it’s his ankle he sprained a few weeks back not being 100% (tweaked it again last night) coupled with his current fairly one-dimensional approach to basketball games. Some of this in on the coaches for not getting him activated (you could see the team force feeding him shots last night with not much to show for it) but with AD out we need more production from every starter. KCP still doesn’t look ready to deliver that, yet.
2. More Marc Gasol. I was wary of losing Howard and consoling ourselves with Gasol. I thought we lost a formidable defender who opened up the pick and lob game. No Laker really replaces what Dwight did for us, especially in the regular season. So when AD went down I resorted to a tactic I rarely use: considering trades from Laker Tom. Luckily the burlier and younger Gasol stepped up and I was able to shelve that idea, for now. Marc had one of his best outings of the year last night and I think the answer to unlocking the best version of Gasol resides inside the game stats. Specifically minutes played. Basketball is a rhythm game and it’s hard to get one when you play 20 or fewer minutes per game. Especially for older players. You’re just getting warmed up and you’re yanked out. I’d like to see Marc play closer to the 30 minutes we saw from him last night and see how that alters the game for us.
3. THT has officially been scouted. This was what I was waiting for. For all intents and purposes this is Talen’s rookie season. He played sparingly for us at the NBA level last season and certainly far less was expected of him in his true rookie season. That he has the role he does now is incredible in and of itself. What THT is going through now happens to every player at least once in their careers. You play enough that the rest of the Association knows what your pet moves are, what direction you like to drive, and any cute tricks you might deploy in order to shake loose for a score. It’s obvious that Horton-Tucker prefers to drive the ball into the paint and collapse the defense or slink around the defense for a tricksy-doodle layup. He likes it so much he’s passing up open three pointers to drive the rock into the teeth of the defense with extremely mixed results, of late. He’s good enough to get the shots off but the degree of difficulty is high and when you pass up an open three created off someone else’s drive you’re wasting all that hard work they just put in for you. Take the open look. It’ll open up the rest of your game.
4. The turnovers are going to improve at some point…right? In the 1st quarter we gifted the T’Wolves with 6 extra possessions by way of turnovers, that doesn’t count any offensive rebounds they may have gathered in the first stanza. This trend continued throughout the game, as it has for most games this season. The Lakers coughing the ball up is one of the few consistent things the team does. I try to ignore it, play it off to guys still finding their way. However, it’s not getting better and this will be a huge issue come the playoffs if we don’t clean it up.
5. Kieff’s big game. Morris showed up large last night and with no AD he’s going to be key to us treading water in the standings and staying roughly where we are. Markieff has struggled for most of the season so it’s been nice to see him coming around now and especially to see that three ball falling with more regularity.

The Lakers are banged up and have to be looking forward to the All Star break to get nagging injuries as right as can be expected, take a mental break and load up for the stretch run into the playoffs. I don’t expect to see a big trade and maybe not even a small one. With the Lakers so close to being hard-capped they don’t have a ton of wiggle room and so salary matching will be an issue along with the injury to AD making it hard to lose the players that are going to be taking his minutes. The Blake Griffin buyout situation could be real and a saga worth watching. We’ll see.