Aloha,
The disaster of this season keeps rolling along when even some wins feel like losses. This is one of those games. Last night the Lakers wasted what was a solid defensive effort with our same old demons. We took a big lead and then rolled over in the 2nd quarter. 16 turnovers led to 24 Blazer points. We turned the blazers over 12 times for one point. Then there was 18 offensive rebounds we gave up. And in the spirit of keeping the game interesting we missed 7 free throws down the stretch that allowed the Blazers heartbeat to stay alive. Another game. Same issues. On a night when offense eluded most of our players it could have been another devastating loss. Against a better team, it would have been.
AD was a monster. 30 points 15 boards and 3 blocks. Even when healthy AD has been an enigma this year. He outplayed Embid and had this kind of game against another solid center. But there have been games where you hardly notice him. He has to be monster AD for the rest of the year for us to even have a chance.
Melo had another solid game. If it wasn’t for his offense it wouldn’t have mattered what AD did. But we don’t get this Melo constantly either. I’ve said before he has been either hot or cold we little in between. We we will need more of these games moving forward.
We have 3 more winnable games without LeBron coming up and 3 tough ones before the all star break. The Clippers and Knicks are the next 2. I’m not sure when LeBron will be back. It follows a pattern of no big deal, then he misses a month. We absolutely have to win those 3 and upset at least one of the Bucks, Warriors, Jazz. The Jazz have been falling so that might be the one. Although we gave the Bucks all they could handle last time without LeBron. I’m hoping the break will allow the team some practice time that they haven’t had. Also Nunn is ramping up his work outs, so it would be great to have him ready for the stretch run. If we can put together a winning streak down the stretch the 5th and 6th seed are not out of reach. But it will never happen with games like last night.
Michael, I completely agree with you. Thank God we were able to squeak by with a win.
The game was not fun to watch. We shot the ball 42% from the field but that was deceiving as our shots were few and far in between. That is because we failed miserably to get points off of Blazers’ turnovers. One point out of 12 turnovers? That won’t cut it. Giving up that many offensive rebounds are just not good hustle.
I really like what I saw in AD last night. He completely took ownership of the game and was very aggressive. If only he could sustain that level of dominance for the rest of the season. We are going to need that if we are going to have a fighting chance. Great to see Melo do his part and I am liking his midrange shots a lot. I almost gave up on the team in the second and third quarters. We can’t play like that against good teams, not even against the Clippers who we facing tonight.
Thanks for the post.