Farmar Sits, Lakers Outmatch Mavs

With Jordan Farmar on the sideline, the Lakers had to wait until the final quarter to pull away from the Mavericks.

Kasib Powell led all scorers with 18 points, pushing the Lakers to a 99-87 win on Wednesday.

After the Lakers opened up the game 21-12 in the first period, Yuta Tabuse would lead the Mavericks in a third quarter surge, giving them a four point lead.

But Powell and Marcus Slaughter would carry the bulk of scoring duties for the Lakers in the fourth, finally pushing them in front of the Mavericks for sure.

Slaughter and Devin Green both scored 16 points for the Lakers.

It was a disappointing effort that saw the Lakers squad, minus Farmar and Marcus Douthit, struggle against the Mavericks’ B-Team.

Coach Kurt Rambis commented on the Lakers’ team effort after the game.

“They need to play well and play hard all the time,” Rambis said . “It’s not a ’sometime’ thing. They’ve got to bring it every day every day in practice and play as hard as they can in ballgames in order for them to improve.”

Farmar sat due to a groin tweak and should be fine.

“He had a little groin or stomach issue, that’s all it was,” coach Rambis told me. “Nothing bad, nothing that’s going to cause him problems. We knew if we had a day off today [and] we’ve got a day off until tomorrow, it was just an opportunity to get some treatment and get better, that’s all.”

Douthit stayed in street clothes due to minor tendonitis in his knee.

Andrew Bynum
Definitely his worst game at the Summer Pro League.

The question is, was it a lack of effort or the effects of fatigue?

Bynum finished with just 2 points on 1 of 7 from the floor. He grabbed 5 rebounds and handed out (a surprising) 6 assists. Bynum, coming off the bench in this one, entered the game with 4:32 to go in the first quarter.

The disappointing thing about this performance was that Bynum went back to his old habits of playing flat-footed. He seemed too burnt-out to exert himself athletically. Andrew got blocked hard, twice in this game. It’s what happens when you rely on size alone to get yourself shot opportunities. Bynum showed little fundamentals in this game, on both ends.

I asked Rambis if he felt Bynum’s poor display was a result of his bad habits or fatigue.

“I think it was more of fatigue,” Rambis said. “Some of it may have come from the fact that I brought him off the bench. I wanted to see him do that. He had been starting, so now you warm up, you go sit down, you get cold and then you have to get back into the ballgame. So some of it could have been that. But that’s the position he’s going to playing if he does play. He’s not going to be starting, he’s going to be coming off the bench, so he’s got to get used to that aspect.”

“But I beat the guys up pretty good in terms of the amount of time we’ve spent practicing and watching videotape. And this was our fourth game in five nights, so it’s a tough road and players do get tired. It’s just a natural phenomenon.”

The four games in five nights seemed to take a toll on Bynum. He was quite ineffective in his 33 minutes on the court.

Let’s talk about some of the positive things Andrew did out there, even in such a disappointing effort.

His six assists shine in the box score among the other columns he didn’t fill up.

In the second quarter, Andrew had a nice bounce pass to Devin Green to score at the basket inside. He set a solid screen to free up J.R. Pinnock on the weak side for an alley-oop dunk later as well. In the final quarter, Bynum did a decent job of denying McCoy when he had the ball in the paint. However, that was about it.

He showed the ball way too early/easily on offense — a result of that was him getting rejected a couple times in this game. NBA-level defenders will take advantage of that much more often if Bynum continues this.

What isn’t positive to see is that he struggled this much without Jordan Farmar out there with him. Two arguments can be made from this: a) Bynum was ineffective without a pure point guard setting him up in favorable positions or b) Bynum didn’t have anyone on his team to give him a decent entry pass into the post.

Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say Andrew was tired. Let’s hope to see a stronger and more intense effort from Bynum in the next contest.

Marcus Slaughter
I’d say this was Slaughter’s best game out there to this point.

Marcus scored 16 points, grabbed 6 boards, blocked 3 shots and shot 7 of 9 from the floor. Not bad at all.

What was evident from Slaughter’s game was that he has a decent midrange shot when open. He consistently hit his shot throughout, but didn’t really assert himself until the final quarter.

Slaughter scored 10 points in the fourth, stepping up when it mattered. After the Lakers fell behind by 4 points, Slaughter started knocking down some shots from the outside. He had two baseline jumpers that pushed the Lakers ahead, following that up with a shot around the top of the arc with 2:30 to play in the fourth quarter.

A nice defensive sequence took place for Marcus when he hustled back to block two shots on a Mavericks fast break late in the game. I’m getting the feeling that he relies on athleticism for shot blocking, but isn’t effective at this when confronted by contact.

As I’ve said before, Slaughter is a bit of a tweener. He’s probably more effective playing small forward and staying away from a situation where he has to play solid post defense.

He had a nice game on Wednesday, let’s see if he builds on that.

Kasib Powell
Kasib Powell finally made himself noticed in this one, leading all scorers with 18 points.

Powell shot 8 of 11, mostly cashing in on open jumpers. Like Slaughter, he has a decent outside shot based on this game.

In addition, he also scored the majority of his points in the final period, putting up 12 of them in the fourth.

The area where Slaughter is far ahead of Powell is court awareness. Powell sometimes seems lost and doesn’t hit his spots in the offense. In the fourth quarter, Von Wafer made a nice cut to the basket, giving Powell a wide open opportunity to hit him on his dive to the basket. Instead, Powell shot a contested jumper. Although he made the shot, it was disappointing to see. I can’t envision Kasib consistently hitting shots with a hand in his face like that.

Though it’s been a short time for these players to learn the triangle, Powell is probably at the bottom of the barrell when it comes to those who understand the offense’s basic principles. He often was on the wrong side of the floor, clogging up the passing lanes on offense.

Kasib didn’t really get serious minutes until this game, so we will watch how he progresses from here on out.

Danilo “J.R.” Pinnock
J.R. started off the game with a bang, scoring the first six points of the game.

Here’s a log of his activities to start:

(2-0) Pinnock switches hands in traffic to finish around the outstretched arms of Jelani McCoy. Nice to see he can adjust his shot and still convert.

(4-0) Pinnock throws down an alley oop from Devin Green and slams it down … along with the basket. The hoop slowly collapses and nearly crushes a Mavericks player underneath it if he didn’t remember to duck. SPL staff comes down, fixes the basket up and we’re ready to go again.

(6-0) Pinnock obviously has no fear of the basket collapsing again. He skies high for a thunderous right handed tip-jam, sending the crowd into a frenzy yet again.

After that, J.R. got a bit shot-happy in my opinion. The four remaining shot attempts he took in the first quarter were mostly contested shots. In all fairness to Pinnock, a couple of them (throughout the game) were shots to bail out the team when the shot clock was low. So let’s give J.R. a pass today, between his heat-check after the hot start and those bail-out shots.

Pinnock finished the game with 12 points on 6 of 13 from the floor.

J.R. grabbed seven boards to go as well. His athleticism will enable him to crash the glass and grab rebounds like this. The impressive part was that six of these were on the offensive end.

He capped off the night with a dunk in the fourth quarter where he alley-oop’d it to himself.

Pinnock finally got the 30 minutes I’ve been waiting for the staff to give him and I’d say he performed above average. It will be good to see him out there now with Farmar and Bynum, a couple of offensive threats that will free him up for easier opportunities.

Devin Green
Devin Green showed again that he can provide a decent game just by picking his spots well and hustling on the floor.

He finished the afternoon with 16 points and 6 rebounds.

As I’ve said before, the standout area of improvement for Green has been his outside shot. Those practices of working with shooting coach Craig Hodges seem to have paid off at the SPL. He surprised some when he confidently pulled up in the third to nail a three-pointer as well.

Yet again, Green also looks comfortable attacking the basket and scoring in the paint. An and-one layup in the third quarter helped keep the Lakers in the game when they were struggling defensively.

His hustle and length on defense served him well, too. In the early stages of the game, he was blocked, but raced back to the other end of the court in transition and stole the ball back. He was a threat at times in the passing lanes, even picking off a pass that led to a Laker fastbreak.

Devin will be part of the struggle to get one of those final roster spot(s) depending on any other moves the team makes from here on out.

Von Wafer
Again, it seriously puzzles me why he is being molded into a point guard.

Von threw away an entry pass to Andrew Bynum early in the game and turned it over in traffic a couple of times. The worst of these turnovers came when Bynum had 5′6″ Yuta Tabuse guarding him on the break and Von had no clue how to get the ball to him.

In just 18 minutes, Wafer had three turnovers. He finished with 11 points on 4 of 10 shooting. Von had difficulty hitting some open looks out there, nothing like the Wafer we saw last year in Long Beach.

I’d like to see some of Wafer playing the shooting guard role. He’s struggled like this (much his own doing) and might be more comfortable running around and playing the catch & shoot game.

The remainder of the team either didn’t provide a significant contribution or did not receive enough playing time for proper evaluation.

Keep tuned in for more interviews and analysis with BDG’s SPL Exclusive reports and ClubLakers.com’s complete coverage of the Summer Pro League over the next couple of weeks.

Comments on this report? Agree/disagree with these evaluations? Want to talk about the game? Sound off in our CL.com SPL discussion.

Huge thanks go out to hZm for providing photos of tonight’s game. For more pictures, click here.

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