Lakerholics

A Lakers Fan Community

Posts

5 Things: Lakers Sweep Kings and a Trade

By 6 Comments

After the Lakers finished the season sweep the Lakers made a choice few around here believed they would make: a trade. While the win was important (vaulting us into 5th place at 18-13) the trade has the potential to redefine the Lakers defense, especially with injury concerns to Vanderbilt, Wood, Hayes, Vincent, and Reddish. All in all, a big day in Laker Land!

  1. The win over the Kings was born of a solid mix of OK defense and timely shot-making. The Kings had no answer for AD in the paint as he put Sabonis in foul trouble and bullied his way to 36 points (11-13 from the free throw line) and along with Reaves applied the right pressure to Sacramento’s defense to complete the sweep. Reaves and AD have a nice chemistry on the floor and, in general, Austin has distinguished himself as a capable (though not elite) offense initiator.
  2. Rui Hachimura should be considered as untouchable as Reaves. The dude just makes shots off the pass. He’s hitting 47.7% of his catch and shoot threes and he’s leading the Lakers in three point efficiency by a country mile at 45.2%. The next closest player is Dalton Knecht at 36.7%. Rui has become the ultimate release valve and is doing it while playing a variety of roles on defense. Small ball center? Rui’s got you covered. He’s averaging a steal/game for the first time in his career and if he upped his rebounding we’d really have something cooking at the 3 spot.
  3. Dalton Knecht re-emerging from his slump. After a few games of virtually vanishing from the offense and seeing his playing time decrease Dalton rediscovered his shooting tough on Christmas and carried it over to the game last night. Dalton has a solid shot at winning ROY and needs to keep impacting winning like he has. He’s not afraid of banging on defense, he’s a decent rebounder and he cuts well off the ball to open up his inside game. We need all of those things on a more consistent basis.
  4. The Trade. Nobody saw it coming, in fact I thought Memphis had locked up DFS yesterday as it sounded like it was a done deal. As always the NBA keeps one on their toes. The trade for Dorian Finney-Smith and Shake Milton was for DLO, Max Lewis and 3 second round draft picks. One has to imagine that Memphis balked at the inclusion of a FRP or was concerned that DFS would either not pick up his player option and walk or that he would and mess up some potential salary cap plans. Regardless the Lakers made the right move. Adding DFS and Milton helps two areas of need, especially with Vincent being out with an injury mid-game last night. DFS allows us to move one of Hachimura or Christie to the bench and augment our shooting and defense while doing it. My personal preference would be to move Max but I feel like Hachimura may end up the fall guy. However it goes this was a solid move by the front office if for no other reason than we made a move that helps preserve the cap space DLO would have cost us had he simply moved on as an UFA.
  5. Speaking of DLO. I want to thank him for his contributions. Coming over as the centerpiece to the Westbrook deal after everything that went down when he was a Laker there were a lot of questions. I think he answered almost all of them, although not all to the liking of the fans. Gone was the immature kid posting Insta videos of his teammates without them knowing and instead we got a quality player on the floor and in the locker room. Helping us get to the western conference finals that season was an awesome journey for him to have taken. It’s unfortunate that Coach Reddick didn’t unlock DLO’s game as hoped for and it felt to me like Russell took a small step back this season and so hopefully he can showcase his talent in Brooklyn and get himself a solid contract this summer. D’Angelo Russell, thanks for everything.

DLO traded!

By 2 Comments

Aloha,

Well it appears that Rob isn’t just sitting around after all. DLO goes to the Nets, along with Lewis for Finney-Smith and Shake Milton. This is a good deal for the Lakers giving them a quality 3 and D wing. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t bring back Sharpe as a back up center, because they could have fit his salary in instead of Milton. They will be around 2 and 1/2 mil under the 2nd apron that could be helpful. We also gave up 3 2nds but no firsts. So we still have those to work with.

Rob kind of reminds me of Mitch in one respect. He never shows his hand. Everyone thought we were trading for Buddy but he trades for Russ. The Rui, DLo and Vando trades came out of the blue. And now this one. We still need a back up center. I’m hoping that will happen soon.

Random Thoughts

By Leave a Comment

Aloha,

Last night we saw a duel between Austin and the guy many want to trade him for the Kings Fox. Austin had 26points on 9-16 shooting and 3/4 from 3 with 16 assists. Fox came in with 29 points on 12-25 shooting and 1-9 from 3 and 12 assists. Now Fox is an all star and better then Austin at this point although he’s not a good 3 point shooter at 32% But the question is, is he so much better that he is worth trading Austin, DLO and Dalton along with 2 first round picks and perhaps some swaps. The answer to that question is no.

We have won the last two missing one of our stars. No AD on Christmas which is a highly intense game regardless of who you are playing and last nights Kings game could have been a trap game after Mike Browns firing. You knew the Kings would play hard and they did.

So here’s the deal, when we are missing a star we play a more team oriented game. And it shows how much talent we actually have. With missing stars, Austin stepped into the 2nd star role and played like one.

Rui moved up to the 3rd option and scored 18 and 21. He went 9 for 12 from 3 over the 2 games. He’s our best 3 point shooter at 45%. One would think a team would try to get him 6 3’s a game. His defense has also become pretty good. He had another 2 blocks and a steal last night.

Max is growing before our eyes. Holding his own defensively against some of the best players in the world. He also scored 16 in the last 2 games.

Dalton had 18 and hit a couple of 3’s which is a good sign.

All of this around AD’s 36 and 16. For me, it begs the question. WHY CAN’T WE PLAY THIS KIND OF TEAM BALL WITH BOTH OF OUR STARS ON THE COURT?

If played like this as a team when both LeBron and AD are available, we would be a much more dangerous team.

Hopefully both Wood and Vando will be back soon. It would almost be like a trade since neither have played this year. Vando gives us another defender and Wood gives us a big that can play with AD at times.

Speaking of trades, I really don’t know what they will do. It’s kind of funny that the Lakers are linked to every player rumored to be on the trade block.

Our good play does buy time for the trade prices of some of these guys to go down. I would like to find a back up center right away. We were lucky that AD got hurt against the Warriors because they play small. We would not be as lucky against other teams.

There are a couple of centers that could help . Both Sharpe with the Nets and Richard’s of the Hornets are both good rim protectors and rebounders with bulk. Either would be an upgrade over Hayes . We desperately need a defensive center when AD is not on the floor. And either one of these guys can be had for a 2nd round pick or 2. Center is one position that we have leverage because there are more centers available than teams that need one.

LeBron should be fresh again for the Cav’s. Looking at the schedule, there games against bad teams that if he sat out he could get 4 or 5 days rest. We need to take advantage of those games.

With almost an entire month of home games coming up, this is a time when we can begin to stack some wins. We appear to playing well at the right time. I think we can move into the top 4
If we play as team, like the last couple of games.