5 THINGS

Afternoon games in STAPLES are always a modest affair. Los Angeleninos are already laid back and if they haven’t gotten in three mochacinos and lunch they can be a sleepy bunch. When the Lakers put in 2/3 to 1/4 of effort for an entire NBA playoff game they don’t get up for that. As a result the Lakers looked lifeless for most of the game, lost to the Suns, and allowed the series to get tied at two.

1. Lakers didn’t show up with an aggressive attitude or looking to put their foot down on the Suns. Attitude is a weird thing. It ties into everything, manifests itself in results and can be a positive or negative. You can call it a mind set, focus, attitude-whatever you’d like In the Lakers’ case yesterday afternoon it wasn’t much if a positive. Even before the strained groin AD loomed tentative settling for jumpers, not really demanding the ball and fading into the background on offense. All sorts of guys passed up open looks or ran themselves off the three point line right into Phoenix’s defense and we were by far more involved with the refs (although both teams have been overly invested in calls so far). We need to knock off these kind of antics and play hard and forceful from here on out. Let Davis, James and Vogel get into with the refs. Get you head in the game.
2. New NBA record!!! Frank Vogel set an NBA record in the game yesterday: quickest Coaches Challenge ever! 15 whole seconds into the game, one that had tremendous stakes and also happened to suck whatever excitement had built up pregame right out of STAPLES Center. Frank was extremely successful in his challenge savvy during the regular season. I thought this one was utterly wasted. Ended up there were several other moments throughout the course of the game that would have had more impact and also more likely for us to have won. I though Frank was off last night and he has his hands full with Monty Williams who also happens to be an excellent coach. Frank needs to be smarter with his challenges and time outs.
3. Rotation experiment forced to continue. Injuries and exploited match ups forced Vogel to, once again, play too many guys in spot minute situations. Phoenix has a fairly tight and powerful 9 man rotation deployed, one they’ve used pretty much all season with contributions from others during the regular season. The Lakers? Our 11 man whack-a-doo rotation continues to show why this sort of thing isn’t a recipe for NBA playoff success. To be honest, a good part of this is being forced due to injury. But the 5 minutes of Trezz was a joke as was the 8 minutes of Morris. Pick one, you know what they bring and what they don’t. You either need outside scoring and defense or energy and inside scoring acumen. It’s not like they duplicate one another in any way. Same goes for McLemore. Don’t leave him out there on defense for long stretches, he’s going to get burned. If you need a sniper then put the sniper in and run a play. If you need Trezz then play him in his actual role. Morris has looked broken for months, not sure he has a role in the post season in all honesty. He’s off on defense missing a lot of rotations or being out of place as often as Drummond has been, isn’t even looking to shoot the three ball and is now missing his paint attempts. Not much positive to see from that whole situation right now. I had hoped the amped up energy of STAPLES and/or the playoffs would kick-start ‘Kieff but it hasn’t happened, yet.
4. Bench still floundering. I don’t think starting Wes is the answer, not unless they’re going to try and get him going from three. I would rather start Kuzma or, if I’m being honest, Caruso. Start Booker and CP3 off going against our two best on-ball defenders in Schroeder and Alex, gum up the game from the get-go and let Wes feast on bench dudes with the second unit. Schroeder needs to attack the rim like he wants to score not like he wants to avoid contact and then fall down and get a whistle. That kind of chicanery doesn’t fly in the playoffs. You might get a whistle a time or two in this or that series but it’s not a recipe for wins. If we stick with Wes, or if KCP comes back and is something resembling effective (which he has not been) then fine but make Wes a scoring option and force the Phoenix defenders to account for him honestly with some more attempts.
5. The Drummond/Gasol debate. The time, I believe, has come. It’s obvious that Dre’ is struggling with Ayton’s ability to defend him straight up and he gets swarmed in the paint by Phoenix when he gets the ball. The Laker offense is plodding along right now, and this is not a knock on Drummond, by the way. AD gets the ball and starts writing his memoire before making a move. James is, again, milking the shot clock for on-court rest and in general we don’t hit guys in stride or on the move with our passing. Credit the Suns but also critique the Lakers for not adjusting and finding ways to shake loose for some easy scores. Having Gasol at the top of the key helps that as it at least pulls Ayton out to the free throw line and opens up the possibility for some back door cuts (I watched Caruso try to get into that action three separate times and the man with ball, twice Gasol, missed him every time). The action is a solid plan whether the backdoor cut works or not. You have to get the defenders off their toes and onto their heels. We’re not even trying to do that right now, just passing around the perimeter waiting for someone to drive the ball into the teeth of the D.

Last night should be concerning for Laker fans, it wasn’t like Phoenix ran us off the court we just don’t make poorly created shots. That’s not new, this has been an issue all season for us. When we stagnate on offense we lose. Our defense was fine, Phoenix got 100 for the first time in the series, but we need to cut the turnovers (15…again…why this didn’t concern more people earlier in the season has always been a mystery to me but we are who we are now…), play smarter and go harder to the rim. if you miss and they don’t call the foul because of contact, so be it but take a man down with you. Time to see who has some junk yard dog in them and who is ready for vacation because the season has just been too hard. Man up or go home.

Maybe that could slowly help shrink the racial gap culturally. Slow and steady wins the race. Tortoise beats the hare everytime.

Aloha Jamie
I thought about Rubio to but that it could be hard to do. Perhaps mid season like you said. If we can trade for Malik i would love it. Unlike Buddy, he is actually a decent defender. For a bad team the Twolves dont have much cap space and they are painfully thin at forward, so you never know. Perhaps the would roll the dice with Kuz. hes upgraded his game and perhaps he will become more aggressive offensively if hes out Lebron and AD’s shadow.

It started ugly but finished on a beauty. It was everything you want in a 7 game series in 1 game. Some questions were answered, new questions emerged and all in all planet Earth was treated to a very enjoyable basketball game. Hard fouls, hard cuts and a gritty win kicked off the NBA playoffs…kinda. Evidently the play-in doesn’t count for the regular season or the playoffs? WTF?! Whatever.

1. The greatness of LeBron James. Kind of lost against the back drop of a spectacular go-ahead three pointer in the final minute of the 4th quarter was another…not playoff nor regular season (really NBA? really? You invent this play-in and created some sort of non-game? H’ok…). I guess this makes James the All Time leader in play-in triple-doubles, I suppose. LeBron showed everyone why is still the best player in basketball. The Flagrant Foul that wasn’t that resulted in blurry vision? No problem. Swarming defense that bumped him off every paint shot? I got you guys. James stayed the course through a rocky first half, went over his loose minutes limit and delivered the 7 seed to the Los Angeles Lakers.
2. 10 men deep. Called on it on the preview podcast, Frank went 10 deep and I was actually mildly surprised we didn’t see more minutes for more guys. Luckily for Laker fans Vogel came to his senses and tightened up the second half rotation to just 8 players: James, Davis, Drummond (barely), Schroder, Kuzma, KCP, Caruso and the instrumental insertion of Wesley Matthews Jr. into the rotation after he didn’t see the floor in the first half in favor of Trezz and THT. Frank continues to, mystifyingly to me, experiment with his rotations. It’s a dangerous game to play in the playoffs but it also speaks to the lack of chemistry and continuity this version of the Lakers has been able to put together.
3. Good thing we have Alex Caruso. He steadied the offense early, then came up some incredible defense late and stayed within his game to find the open man for some nice looks around the rim. A lot of those didn’t come up as assists because of good, hard fouls by the Warriors but they did result in foul shots which helped us to a 25-15 advantage in free throw attempts. That helped us bridge the three point differential (15-10, advantage GS) and overcome a generally poor shooting performance. Caruso also proved to be our best player to slot onto Curry for defense as Schroder just couldn’t keep Curry in front of him and still looks like he’s finding his legs in every facet of the game. We’ll certainly need Dennis as we move forward and he’ll come around with his conditioning but until he does it’s nice to have Caruso as an option even though he’s nowhere near the scorer Dennis can be.
4. Wesley Matthews making the most of his role. In the first half Frank went more with Trezz and THT who both played OK but weren’t effective defensively and didn’t overcome that enough on offense. That forced Vogel to turn to Matthews in the small ball line up he used a lot more in the second half and Wes delivered with a key three pointer, some stout D and a huge rebound. +/- is a wonky stat but in Wesley’s case I think it apropos he led the team, by far, +/- in his 14 minutes because his defense was huge for us in the second half. His numbers weren’t eye-popping but his contributions were sorely needed last night.
5. Controlling the glass and keeping the turnovers low. These are things I’ve harped on since game 1 this season. Our team has a turnover issue, well-documented at this point, and we’re a team that needs to control the glass to make our defense as effective as possible. Since we’re the bigger team it stood to reason that we should control the glass. We also forced more turnovers than we committed, aided by some traditionally silly play by one Draymond Green, but it was the rebounding job that impressed me even more. Almost every Laker who played grabbed an offensive rebound (THT and Trezz did not) with LeBron James leading the way for rebounds off our own misses. That was another huge key in us getting 8 more shot attempts than the Warriors got. The Laker defense in the 3rd was where the game turned for us and Frank, to his credit, stuck with what worked down the stretch.

Next up Phoenix. I like our chances in this series and expect us to win in 5 or 6 games, haven’t decided yet. Regardless, it’s going to be tough no matter what as we see 2 more All Star guards in CP# and Booker along with a bevy of solid players who can shoot the three and defend better than advertised. We need to keep the turnovers low on our end and keep playing stout defense. When we do that we can win any game, even one where we shot 40.7% from the floor. Go Lakers.