One Bad Man

Aloha

Last night was a battle between two of the best in the league and AD won the battle but the Lakers lost the war. This is the AD that we all hope to see going forward. On just AD’s second game back I was hoping he would just hold his own. I was elated to see him out play Embid, who was on a historic run. The most important aspect of AD’s night was his found jump shot. It had gone missing after he sustained that thumb injury, early in the season. Perhaps the time off gave his thumb time to properly heal as well.

The rest of the game went down hill from there. Despite his decent offensive night, Russ is just not a good fit for this team when we are in the half court. LeBron organizes the floor. And he finds the open man. May not always be the right guy but at least they are open. Russ does none of that. Our 3 point shooters struggled last night but part of that was because they didn’t have many clean looks. And the 3 assists that Russ managed is unacceptable with LeBron out. Malik was the guy setting up AD with 5 assists. Throw in Russ’s wild turns overs, whether it’s a very bad pass or dribbling into 3 defenders, it’s clear Russ is not the guy to carry the load with a star out.

Our defense was good enough to win this game. Considering the way Embid was playing, 26 on 9 for 20 was good effort. Harris had 23 but that wasn’t a back breaker. 105 over all was okay. Our offense just has to be better. Both Austin and THT are slumping which hurts. I would like to see Wayne get a little run every game. As a shooter, it’s just asking a lot of him to come in after not playing for long stretches of games and expect him to be sharp.I’ve seen enough from Malik and Melo that I’m not too concerned by an off night.

If there is any silver lining it’s that when I looked at this road trip I actually had at 2 and 2 at this point, thinking they would beat the Hornets and Hawks with AD back. But the Hornets are a good team and the Hawks are on a 5 game winning streak. Hopefully LeBron will be back, because it will be tough without him.