5 Things: Guns Blazing

The Alamo, that house in Young Guns, Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid, and the Lakers’ locker room. What do all these things have in common? A group of people with their backs up against the wall with nothing left for it but to come out guns-a-blazing and see if they can shoot their way out of their worries.

1. Keep forcing action in the paint. The three ball is important but the Lakers are utterly dominating in the paint and that needs to be the theme for the rest of whatever playoff life we have left in us. We can’t let Denver outscore us in the paint or in transition and the second-chance points need to at least be kind of close.
2. Attack their best players on offense. Can’t line change like in hockey so, when they’re on the court, attack Jokic and Murray as a first, second and third option. We got Jokic in foul trouble which did absolutely nothing to stifle his legendary excellence on offense but did mean he played with less, shall we say enthusiasm, on defense which made it easier on our guards and best players to score at the rim and in the paint.
3. Make Murray move. Make him fight through screens. Do everything but sweep the leg (sensei?) because if his hamstring is giving him trouble that’s a weakness we absolutely need to exploit just like Denver did to us last season with LeBron and his foot. Lateral movement is not a hamstring’s friend and neither is contact. Show Murray both sides of that coin.
4. 48 hard. I said it at the beginning and between every single game, this is not a team you can play 44-46 good minutes of basketball, it’s a full 48 of excellent effort or go home. It really is that simple. Whomever is on the court, whatever your role is, play hard and with force. Do not let the Nuggets dictate pace or physicality or you are toast.
5. There’s only one way to stop the Nuggets fans from chanting and we kind of frittered away what may have been our best shot of that in game 2. Win on their floor. Now we gotta do it twice and, no matter what articles are written or what media head says otherwise, all of the pressure is still on us. This isn’t a series until we win at Denver and, since we no-showed game 3, we need to do it twice in a row. Daunting? Yes, absolutely. Impossible? …No? I don’t think so…but nigh impossible. It will require the utmost of focus, execution, and not whining about the officiating. Just go out and play. Hard.

Bonus point: I’m not sure I’d throw Vando into this fire. Dude needed a few weeks to get back to the player we remembered from last season and this really isn’t the time. I’d say 100% no way except for we don’t really get that much out of the bench right now so I suppose he couldn’t hurt. Still, it’s a lot to ask a guy who hasn’t played in 2 months to come into a tense playoff atmosphere and bring his A game.