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The Myth of Lakers small ball

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Aloha,

I am amused by the notion that the Lakers went small to win this game. AD, Lebron, Morris and Kuz are not small players. And we beat them up inside like we should have with our size advantage.

But our true advantage is on the defensive end because our big guys can guard their little guys. And when you add in solid defenders like Green, KCP and Alex to the mix, it really takes a small team like the Rockets out of their game. I don’t think the Rockets will ever win a ring until they can add a couple of tall guys that can play in their system. I think size still matters in the NBA and our ability to play small, while staying tall is our advantage here.

5 Things: Lakers take 3-1 series lead over Houston

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Lakers fooled around a little too much and suddenly Houston was granted the power to just jump on top of anyone but in the end the lead we built up over 3 and 4/5ths of dominating basketball was enough to overcome Houston’s late game surge. Frank Vogel granted LakerTom’s wish, Talen Horton-Tucker got some playoff burn and the Lakers are looking to close it out on Saturday. Good stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev8SibkJhNg
  1. Lakers make the final adjustment: go full Lilliput. It was the Lollypop Guild vs. the Lullaby League, Willow vs. Tyrion Lannister. The Time Bandits vs. Frodo, Sam, Merry, Pippin and Strider (starring Anthony Davis as Aragorn II Elessar). There was no traditional center to start the game is my point. Markieff Morris replaced JaVale McGee (who, like Dwight Howard did not see the court) in the starting line up. The result was a pretty dominating three quarters of basketball. While some of what went down was aided by the incredibly lackluster Houston squad, there’s no denying that the Lakers put forth an excellent defensive effort that fueled their fast break and points in the paint advantage. While it didn’t unlock magical accuracy from three point land (we shot 9-30, 30%) we were able to better execute the trapping defense that has stalled out the Houston offense.
  2. Dominating the glass. It took a great team effort to dominate the glass tonight. It took Danny Green and Rajon Rondo fighting for 3 offensive rebounds apiece, LeBron battling for a team high 15 rebounds and a lot of boxing out. It took every one of those rebounds and effort points for us to survive the late flurry at the end. We lost our focus on those kinds of plays with about 7 minutes to go. The foot came all the way off the gas pedal and it turned out to be very fortunate that we had the cushion we did.
  3. Free Throw Blues. One of the reasons we coughed up the big lead was we stopped playing smart defense, started reaching and holding instead of moving our feet. James Harden shot 20, 4 more than the entire Laker team combined. The Lakers have been able to overcome the free throw discrepancy mainly because they’ve been romping in the paint. They need to keep that up for one more game.
  4. 62-24 is where the game was won. That was our advantage in the paint. Aided by our 19-2 advantage in fast break points the points in the paint will be looked back upon as our key to success. We got that advantage in a variety of ways, LeBron James doing his thing, Rondo cutting to the rim unguarded because…yeah…defense, offensive rebounding by the team, and a focus on getting to the basket emphasized by Vogel in the broadcast. While we Frank made the call to bench both his 7 footers (OK, Dwight’s always been more like 6’10”) we still won playing big, just in a small way.
  5. Talen Horton-Tucker! Give me that over J.R. Smith all day, every day. Maybe even over Waiters. Talen got his first bucket on one of our 9 makes from three point land. But his second was a thing of beauty. Driving right at James Harden the rookie showed no fear of the beard and juked the Rockets All-Star out of position before dropping a perfect finger roll through the net. A great moment for the second round pick of the draft. Another great example of the Laker G-League system. Most importantly: a validation of hard work and perseverance.

Got another dog-fight on Saturday. Even though we’re up 3-1 it hasn’t been an easy 3-1. Need to close it our on Saturday, don’t give Houston any more reason to hope. Go Lakers.