Fri. 5/9 - Lakers vs. Jazz Game 3 - Predictions/Comments

[kwembinekwek]

We won in ESA without Pau, I believe we can do it now. We just have to play a game similar to the game that we played last time we beat them in ESA.
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[Banzai]

I hope the Lakers play out of their minds on Sunday...almost like when they won in Utah without Pau

[superbad]

i just caved and bought one of those jack nicholson's mvp shirt to help me deal with this loss.

i also bought some kobe mvp pins.

i need to block ebay whenever the lakers lose.
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[Valentino Rossi]

Points in the paint......for Utah

Points in the paint....not for LA

Jordan guarding D will? that was a huge Fukk up on Phils part? What was he thinking???

done get me wrong, I love Farmar, but D Will out weighs him by 25 plus lbs.

High post, why was Phil, allowing Pau to operate from the high post?

Because of that, less P in the P...

The D wasnt there, the energy was down, I saw a lot of quick 3's, which is never a recipie for a Laker win....

All that said, Utah played well enough to won by 15, but yewt it was only 5? I think we are in their head, I still think this series goes back 2-2 and we trounce them in game 5, setting up a Laker move on in game 6....
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"And what is Rome Maximus?"
"I've seen much of the rest of the world. It is brutal and cruel and dark, ROME is the light..."

[pandg]

sooner or later in this series... i think kobe needs to be put on williams..... although i realize this would only work if utah has players on the floor that we can match up to with kobe guarding their pg...

[trodgers]

[trodgers]

[spitty]

Totally spoiled my day. After amazing game by kobe they choke it away with some pathetic team defense. Pau is total softy. Allowing them to get under the rim without a problem. Aghhhh!!!!!!!!!

[pandg]

[Azn Pinoy]

[d33pzone]

Um I actually thought we lost the game in the first half with the turnovers, specifically the second quarter. The defense wasn't good all night. Our backcourt bench players didn't give us much, especially vujacic.

Encouraging things to look for are the way we cleaned things up in the second half (turnovers). The defense got a bit better, but still needs improvement. We showed heart by coming back and being aggressive getting to the line. I think we can win game 4.
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[d33pzone]

And I do believe the two early fouls on Fisher were huge because Farmar didn't run the offense particularly well. We got to do something about Okur. Boozer and WIlliams are all-stars, we can expect for them to have great nights like this. But letting Okur take wide open threes and giving him a lane to the basket are unacceptable. Kirelenko was playing good in the first half but got in foul trouble near the end of the third, and that kind of slowed him down. We played well on Korver the whole night, which is encouraging.
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[engin]

Starting the fourth quarter with second unit was a huge mistake by PJ. At least one of Kobe and Odom should have been on the floor. Kobe stepped up big time in the second half and was the single main reason for us to be in the game. I disagree with the idea that Gasol cost us this game, this is his style of play(i don't see it changing dramatically soon) and he is definitely not good at rebounding in traffic. He should have been careful with all those sloppy turnovers, though. And i agree that Vujacic should have been playing in the clutch time although he didn't score till then.

On Sunday i expect Utah playing with the same energy but i'm sure we will come stronger, too. Kobe should start dominating earlier, Vujacic should defend Williams for some time and Mbenga gets some playtime(especially in the midst of the second quarter and at the end of the third quarter). Hopefully Mehmet will not hit the treys this time.

As for the officiating, i think it was fair enough considering the fact that we are playing in one of the toughest buildings and got 9 more free throws than Utah. It will not be any better than but this is still good since Kobe's aggression is being rewarded with calls.
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Verba volant, scripta manent.

[davriver290]

[westcoast21]

Lakers win on sunday, no doubt in my mind AS LONG as they cut down the turnovers. Hey we played a bad game and lost by five, not bad at all. Then we take it back to LA for the series ending win.
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[SammyG]

Not too worried. Utah played great, we turned the ball over 435,353 times and we still only lost by 5. Not gonna happen again. Lakers in 5.

[KB24@CL]

Farmar SUCKS.
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"It is not how big you are, it is how big you play"
"Basketball doesn't build character. It reveals it"
"Be strong in body, clean in mind, lofty in ideals"

[spitty]

I wonder if we can package odom and Farmar for Iguadola and andre miller. With sign and trade.

[Lakers Advocate]

everything had to go wrong for us for the jazz to win by 5 points....
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[magicmoment]

grrrrrrrrrrr...
its one loss, but a loss we coulda won
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"Fix your hair Sasha. Gotta look pretty now" - Stu Lantz
"Lakers play for Championships" ~Lamar Odom

Estamos Aquí!

http://www.myspace.com/krazy_laker_fan

[GG]

most people here thought that we were gonna win in 5 anyway, so i don't see why they're disappointed. when you say your team is going to win in 5, you kind of expect a loss. i expected them to sweep, but oh well.
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[BB]

Well, the first loss of our post season comes with frustration, of course. Especially losing like we did. The good part is that we got outplayed in every department of the game, but we still kept it close. Looking back at the game, this is one of those games we were losing by 30 last season. We can win it in five games if we improve our execution and if we don't get down by halftime because playing catch-up basketball with the best home team in the league isn't a good thing.

RANDOM FACT:The Lakers didn't have a lead in this game since the beginning of the 2nd quarter.

You really can't complain much about the refereeing. They got the calls we got at home and it wasn't like a landslide of bad calls. Blaming the refs shouldn't be a thing for this game, but since we're at it, Kirilenko's tip in of Williams's airball was a shot clock violation. :P

I'll break it up on my thoughts on every Lakers that played:
PG:Derek Fisher - besides the early foul trouble, he had a great game and even defensively he did a solid job against one of the best PGs in the league(2nd best in my opinion). He was also responsible for our 4th quarter come back.
SG:Kobe Bryant - he had a great game, except his silent 2nd quarter and occasional three point chuck ups. I think that he should have attacked the basket more in the 4th considering we got the Jazz into early foul trouble, but all the Lakers should have done that. Bottom line, he had the best performance out of the players of the both teams.
SF:Vladimir Radmanovic - was he even in the game? Because I didn't see him anything. Ok, I'm lieing. I saw him miss three pointers. I mean, the only thing he can do is shoot and he was off tonight, meaning he was useless. This shows how much we really need Ariza back.
PF:Odom - will you pretty please shoot more than 3 times a game? Especially when you're making Boozer work defensively. Will you? And with the tons of people blaming Pau for this game, it wasn't him who had to guard Carlos who got 27 points and 20 rebounds.
C:Gasol - the epitome of a bad game for him was this. Passive and turning it over in the first half is what killed us. He also couldn't stay on Okur due to Odom always getting beat by Boozer, but as I said we rely too much on help defense. The guy can shoot, just stay on him!

BENCH:
PG:Farmar - looking at the boxscores at halftime, he had the most shots of the Lakers while playing 11 minutes. That's unacceptable. Especially when you miss all of them. This guy didn't play anything since the All Star Break and he should think about returning half of his paycheck to the Lakers. I don't get how he became such a ballhog because he could never defend, even if he has quick feet. To wrap it up, he could have just wore a Jazz jersey last night.
SG:Sasha - another bench player who had a horrible game. He did decent on defense, but couldn't buy a bucket to save his life... I'm happy he didn't go trigger happy though.
SF:Luke Walton - looking at his stat line it didn't look like he had a bad game. I think he played better than Radmanovic, even though he has no defense either. Still, he turned it over stupidly to do back to back turnovers after Kobe slipped and turned it over on the previous possession.
PF:Ronny Turiaf - he played great throughout the game, but sadly Phil took him off when he was hot and later he got into foul trouble. Not much to be said about him.

Key things to improve for the next game/games are rebounding and defense, even if we played great defense on stretches. The Lakers players should understand that a defensive play endswhen you get the ball, not when the opponent shoots, so boxing out is key to great defense and sadly, nobody on our team does this.

I didn't know where to post this, so oh well...

[Nak]

Boozer will not have a game like this in his entire career, that´s all. And the refs will not be against the Lakers this way again, I hope so. They shoot the ball very well, they hit everything, they are not going to hit those shots next game, we´ll see.

PHIL HAS TO TELL PAU OFF FOR HIS SOFTNESS ONCE AGAIN.

Anyway, Lakers will win Game 4 and 5 and it will be over.
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Don´t trade Lamar Odom

[ukraine08]

we could have won it if they had called the foul at the end instead of the jump ball:
2 free throws would have made it 101-103 then ful court press, possible turnover if yes easy 2 to tie and go rage in OT or foul and hopefully he makes 1/2 shots and then give kobe the ball to sink the three, but we got a jump ball and of course luke walton makes a horrible pass and its over!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[KareemTheGreat33]

I love this team despite the loss...you think they would just capitulate after being outplayed but showed their heart at the end albeit too late..

I now know we will win the championship this year...Gasol will be back I tell you...this Utah crowd won't rattle our guys on game 4...

The fact is when we were down I never thought we would lose...I never felt this way about a Laker team since the 2001 championship..

This loss is just a reminder for the players of our ultimate goal...there will be hardships and setbacks but in the end we will emerge victorious...

BTW, I tell you my fellow CL posters that whining about this single loss would be messageboard fodder for haters...accept this loss with magnanimity..we'll get them the next game..

Eye the prize, baby, eye on the prize!
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fortuna favet fortibus

[Oz]

we almost had that game, the turnovers killed us. The jazz had wayyy to many points off our turnover all the lakers have to do next game is play the same but with less turnovers and tighten their defense.
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The only reason i still believe in myself , is because no one else does

[Heir]

[KareemTheGreat33]

Utah is a mediocre defensive team but gets away with hacks and bumps which in turn frustrates opponents...That was the story here and this coming game.
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fortuna favet fortibus

[mavoretto]

haha

Look at his!=))))) Some bug!