Everything changed and then everything stayed the same. The Lakers continued a mostly season-long trend of coming out quiet in the 3rd quarter which doomed them to another loss despite the flurry of trade activity conducted by Rob. With LeBron out resting a sore left ankle the burden fell to Anthony Davis to lift and like his future HOF cohort he couldn’t get it done. What Lakers remained did their best but it wasn’t enough despite a below average game from the Bucks.
- So long ex-Lakers. To Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley, Damien Jones and Thomas Bryant I say thank you for your time in the purple and gold. A lot of you took more flak than you deserved, sometimes you also didn’t do yourself any favors and I, for one, wholly appreciated the fire and intensity this particular group of players (well…not really Jones…) played with every single night. I don’t care if egos get bruised or some eggs get broken making the meal. We saw a whole team of chummy buddies lose a shit ton of games last season. Getting along and feeling good does not a championship team make. We’ll see who lights a fire under the moribund team now because a lot of people are running out of excuses at this point.
- Davis struggles against good to elite defense. AD had no answer to Brook Lopez’s defense except to move further away from the basket. He reverted back to an older shot profile, one that doesn’t lend itself to efficiency and it showed in his FG%. You could argue that Davis took what the defense gave him but I’d counter with he didn’t really even ever try and attack the rim and his lack of free throws shows that. Yes, Brook Lopez is the elite center we traded D’Angelo Russell for (to rid ourselves of the awful, awful Timofey Mozgov signing) and it wasn’t lost on me the irony of people hoping Mo Bamba has it in him to replicate that which we let get away because of our pursuit of a LeBron and AD tandem. At this point Brook has as many rings as our duo and is in a better position to get another one before we do. I’ve long thought that Brook was one of the best players we let get away and he showed that in every facet of the game last night by thoroughly outplaying AD.
- Lakers didn’t do much rebounding. We got anhillated on the glass giving up 16 (!!!) offensive rebounds and losing the overall rebounding battle by 19. This is an area I’m not sure which guy we traded for makes up the difference of losing Russ and Bryant. For all the hoopla about how long Mo’s arms are his career high at 7’1″ is 8.1 rebounds per game in his highest MPG season, by far (25.7). That’s not going to get it done, especially since everyone seems to think he’s best stationed at the three point line rather than do his center job which is box out and rebound. In his 17 MPG this season he’s averaging a quite meager 4.6 boards. Since I don’t envision him doing more than backing up AD (at a pricey $10 million) we turn our eyes to Jarred Vanderbilt (my favorite player we traded for yesterday already). He at least has a rebounding mentality so I won’t be surprised to see him alongside Wenyan when LeBron and AD go to the bench over Bamba.
- Austin Reaves with a bounce back game. Here’s hoping Austin knocked all the rust off last night. he had a great game after a middling affair after a lengthy stint on the IL. Starting or not (likely not) we need this version of Reaves consistently.
- Hey, it’s Dennis Schroder. For at least one game Dennis looked good. After languishing through the game against OKC where he basically looked like a G-Leauger, Euro League Dennis showed up last night. Don’t know what he does on good game days but he needs to bottle it and replicate it in a lab, hopefully one run by David Hasselhoff.
Well, some new players are coming in and it’ll be anyone’s guess what this all looks like leading up to the ASB. My hope is we can go 2-2 before the break, get the new guys into some line ups of impact and give the staff some time to go over film and put some time in on some good ways to utilize them. Whether Rui continues starting is a valid question after his mediocre showing last night. He’s an up and down guy, so far, so it won’t surprise me if he quickly loses his starting spot to Beasley or Reaves or LeBron and we go big with Vanderbilt or Bamba. I have no real clue, honestly, a lot of these guys were running the show or had a steady role on their older teams and that’s not necessarily going to happen here. How they adjust to that and figure how to fit in…and how long that all takes…will now define the Laker’s season along with the game to game health of LeBron and AD. Here’s hoping they’re fast learners.
Honestly we could have traded everyone but LeBron and AD and we’d be in the same spot we are now: can AD and LBJ play enough games to get us into the playoffs? We just don’t have the chemistry, talent or skill to compete in the west and maybe not even beat Boston, Milwaukee or Philly.
My only disappointment these past two games has been AD’s lack of will to assert himself and make a difference. In the OKC game, he was not much of a factor. And like you said he got outplayed by Lopez and Giannis in the Bucks game. We are not winning games with such lackluster performance. He needs to make his presence felt or else we are going to be disappointed. Great observations, Jamie.