A few thoughts

Aloha,

Now that was fun. Our defense continues to roll along and what’s the most impressive, it’s been shutting down very good offenses. We are now the 5th seed in a very tight western conference. If there is going to be a trade or two, the way we are playing Rob can wait for a better deal. Just a few thoughts.

For me this might have been LeBrons best game, primarily because he was pretty engaged on defense, with the exception of a couple of uncontested Murray 3’s. On a night where the Kings were determined to not let AD score, he repeatedly attacked the holes that was created all the way to the rim.

Rui hasn’t shot the ball well the last 2 games but he was still huge in both games. There is a good reason why despite Laker Tom’s best efforts, he is not on the trade block unless it’s for a superstar. He has become a very good defender and can guard 3 through 5 like last night. Neither Murray or Derozan could do much against him and he held his own against Sobonis when we went small. And he has been great on the boards as well. That game winning tap out is something he has been doing all year. What made that even more special was he moved Sabonis under the basket to get to the ball and Sabonis is a strong dude. But so is Rui.

Over the last 10 games or so, DLO seems to have rediscovered his offense. He had another fine game and he competed on defense as well. He is always mentioned in pretty much every trade but they better have a plan for the second unit because he is most of our offense on that unit.

Gabe has been looking like the guy we were hoping to get when we signed him last year. He plays tough defense and his shot has been falling. The last 2 games he went 6 for 8 from 3 and one miss was a half court heave at the buzzer.

Man it’s a shame that Cam can’t find his offense. Because he has been playing some great defense. And he came up with 2 big offensive boards.

AD had a big game on defense and rebounding. I really wasn’t that concerned about his scoring because they sent two or three guys at him all night, which allowed Lebron to score at the rim pretty much whenever he wanted to.

Austin is definitely this teams glue guy as he does a little bit of everything including completing on defense. It’s no wonder we struggled during those 5 games he missed. He’s perfect as our 3rd option.

One sour note for me was turnovers. On paper 13 turnovers isn’t bad, but as usual it was the kind of turnovers that is maddening. I counted at least 6 of what I call WTF turnovers. Sloppy unbelievable turnovers that lead to easy baskets. A lazy out of bounds pass by AD. A couple of passes by LeBron that I couldn’t figure out who he was passing to. A fumbled hand off, a 5 second count. He goes on and on. The Kings had 12 points off of turnovers in the first half alone. Stupid turnovers kept the game close and continues to plague the team.

If we can pick up a couple of wins at least he end of the month it could set us up for a great January where we are home for almost all of the month. Go Lakers.