Dwight Discussion: Dwightmare on Figueroa St. Part Boo

HELLO Jamison and the other guys went off, theres only one ball you know? We pretty much had our way on offense until the last 5 minutes...just like the Orlando game. Dwight gets a lot of attention and it opens things up for others you see Jamison getting in double figures, Kobe getting 30 + points how do you think thats happening?

Dwight gets free throw attempts as well so he's getting the rock

Right now

- We're turning the ball over
- We're not finishing off games well
- That makes it close enough for teams to employ Dwight a Howard
- And we dont have an answer for it as Dwight misses free throws and we play Defense with no enthusiasm. Its a domino effect

They gotta nut up, as a whole, Dwight, MDA, Kobe, everyone

not sure what people want in term of howard's involvement in the offense. the lakers don't have a pg who can run the pick and roll with him right now (at least not very effectively), and he wasn't exactly dynamite on post up isos tonight.

Mark Medina ‏@MedinaLakersNBA
Dwight was incredulous toward my question on D'Antoni refusing to take him out. "Why should he take me out?

Umm, I dunno...

I remember Dwight being clutch at the FT line against us

JGC wrote:

trodgers wrote:If it's fair to blame a loss on one key factor, it's Dwight's shooting in the Hack-a-Dwight situation. And it's not even close.

Disagree. It was a 4pt game when they started Hack a Howard with what, about 3 mins remaining? We were up 11 at hmmm the 7 min mark or so?

Plus he shot 50%. If you expect him to shoot much better than 50% in order for us to win games, then we aren't going to win any really.

Kobe wasn't in the game in the 4th with an 11-point lead. He came in when LA was up 7. Over the next 3:42, the lead fell 3 points. Then Hack-a-Dwight began and in 90 seconds it was gone.

You commit a good deal of short-sighted mistakes in discussing stats, I've noticed. I don't care if Dwight shoots 50% for the game or for the season. You cannot allow your team to settle for 1.00 points per possession (which is what we get if he hits 1/2). No team in the NBA surrenders LESS THAN .99 points per possession, meaning if you're scoring 1.00, you're almost certainly giving up more. So you're losing ground.

Hack-a-Dwight is a catastrophic strategy to try to play through. You can take your chances with him on the court otherwise, outside such situations, because he'll get some easy looks, he'll hand out a few assists, and he'll draw attention. But in situations conducive to Hack-a-Dwight, he needs to be off the court.

Hack a Dwight just destroys the flow of the game....

cthroatgtr wrote:Hack a Dwight just destroys the flow of the game....

This is absolutely true.

The funny thing is that some of the very same people who say that Kobe's 1 on 1 game destroys the flow of the game can't see that Hack-a-Dwight does it even moreso.

cthroatgtr wrote:Hack a Dwight just destroys the flow of the game....

Exactly, it took our offense completely out of sync.

I'm not gonna blame Dwight. We know what we were getting when we traded for him. His free throw woes will continue to be a factor for the rest of his career. That's just one weakness

trodgers wrote:

JGC wrote:

trodgers wrote:If it's fair to blame a loss on one key factor, it's Dwight's shooting in the Hack-a-Dwight situation. And it's not even close.

Disagree. It was a 4pt game when they started Hack a Howard with what, about 3 mins remaining? We were up 11 at hmmm the 7 min mark or so?

Plus he shot 50%. If you expect him to shoot much better than 50% in order for us to win games, then we aren't going to win any really.

Kobe wasn't in the game in the 4th with an 11-point lead. He came in when LA was up 7. Over the next 3:42, the lead fell 3 points. Then Hack-a-Dwight began and in 90 seconds it was gone.

You commit a good deal of short-sighted mistakes in discussing stats, I've noticed. I don't care if Dwight shoots 50% for the game or for the season. You cannot allow your team to settle for 1.00 points per possession (which is what we get if he hits 1/2). No team in the NBA surrenders LESS THAN .99 points per possession, meaning if you're scoring 1.00, you're almost certainly giving up more. So you're losing ground.

Hack-a-Dwight is a catastrophic strategy to try to play through. You can take your chances with him on the court otherwise, outside such situations, because he'll get some easy looks, he'll hand out a few assists, and he'll draw attention. But in situations conducive to Hack-a-Dwight, he needs to be off the court.

Well, I'm not sure what Kobe has to do with it, per se.

If you've noticed some shortcomings in my stats, it's possibly because I'm often pulling them out of memory and not staring blankly at a play-by-play or a stat sheet. I might be off by a few percentages. But I won't pull them out of memory unless I'm quite certain it's close. Your conclusions I often find short-sighted though, FWIW, since I find I don't always agree with them. It's possible that that is either due to an over reliance on stats (even though I do like stats myself) or just ... denial about what the real problems may be. For instance, I do not think practice is a "good excuse" for our poor play.

Anyway, what I do remember is the team being up by 11 at the 7 minute mark. I remember hack a dwight around the 3 minute mark when we had a 4 point lead. How do you lose 7 points in 4 mins in the final quarter of a game? Probably a combination of poor offensive execution and poor defense. I also, for the record, recall us being up by 2 pts after D12 hit his final hack a dwight FTs at the 2 min mark. Am I wrong on this? So to say the lead was gone, is, short-sighted or just, an oversight (unless I'm wrong on this).

I'm sorry but in a game where we led by 8 after 1 quarter, 13 after 2 quarters and came in to the 4th quarter leading by 10 against what should be an inferior team, that should be enough to put the game away hack a dwight or not.

If Dwight can shoot 63% from the FT stripe in hack a dwight situations, then we should still be winning games. Don't you think?

hack a dwight also ruins the game for all the fans... way to make the most exciting minutes of the game soooooo boring...

trodgers wrote:

You commit a good deal of short-sighted mistakes in discussing stats, I've noticed. I don't care if Dwight shoots 50% for the game or for the season. You cannot allow your team to settle for 1.00 points per possession (which is what we get if he hits 1/2). No team in the NBA surrenders LESS THAN .99 points per possession, meaning if you're scoring 1.00, you're almost certainly giving up more. So you're losing ground.

Hack-a-Dwight is a catastrophic strategy to try to play through. You can take your chances with him on the court otherwise, outside such situations, because he'll get some easy looks, he'll hand out a few assists, and he'll draw attention. But in situations conducive to Hack-a-Dwight, he needs to be off the court.

Bingo! If he gives us one point, we're at risk of giving up 3 on the other end. You HAVE to make them pay for putting you on the line. He has no reason to be in late game situations anymore, he's as big of a liability as there is.

Hack A Dwight will continue to happen...teams are catching on now and everybody will start doing it. I feel like this will happen to us a lot more than when Dwight was in Orlando, maybe because he's shooting a career low percentage right now....

Hack A Dwight deflates both our offense AND defense...i don't know how else to explain this but I mean you guys all saw it. Missed ft's deflates your team...and it puts a lot more pressure on you defensively. I'll say one thing though...Kobe's DEFENSE is really ticking me off....he lost delfino on a simple down screen in which delfino faked to go down but then popped out to the top of the key and Kobe for whatever reason lost his footing and then rotated to the wrong man when Duhon rotated out from douglas. These are key plays that Kobe misses his defensive assignment, and he cannot continue to do this. I want to say that he will probably have more energy on D when Nash is back....but man its frustrating to watch.

Dwight isn't going to magically make those free throws...Dantoni needs to take him out. Period.

Dwight can't allow himself to shoot 33% from the line. THEN the Hack-A-Dwight works.

He just needs to hit at least a half of his free throws.

Otherwise it kills us and destroys the flow of our offense too.

Unacceptable.

BDG wrote:Dwight can't allow himself to shoot 33% from the line. THEN the Hack-A-Dwight works.

He just needs to hit at least a half of his free throws.

Otherwise it kills us and destroys the flow of our offense too.

Unacceptable.

But in this game, he did make them, didn't he? I honestly don't get what all the fuss is about in THIS particular game (vs Rockets). He made 63% of his hack a dwight FTs.

After all the hacking a dwighting, our net gain in points was -2.

trodgers wrote:

cthroatgtr wrote:Hack a Dwight just destroys the flow of the game....

This is absolutely true.

The funny thing is that some of the very same people who say that Kobe's 1 on 1 game destroys the flow of the game can't see that Hack-a-Dwight does it even moreso.

THIS.
I just posted that in the Hero-Zero thread. For 5 straight possessions our guys walked up the court to go watch a guy brick FTs. That's WAY worse than anything Kobe could do. Then they had to turn it on on D before the game got out of reach. Not easy. Then you have to go and get a good open look and score, after not even running an offense and standing for more than a minute. Not easy.

But hey, it's Kobe's fault. LOL.

Finwë wrote:

trodgers wrote:

cthroatgtr wrote:Hack a Dwight just destroys the flow of the game....

This is absolutely true.

The funny thing is that some of the very same people who say that Kobe's 1 on 1 game destroys the flow of the game can't see that Hack-a-Dwight does it even moreso.

THIS.
I just posted that in the Hero-Zero thread. For 5 straight possessions our guys walked up the court to go watch a guy brick FTs. That's WAY worse than anything Kobe could do. Then they had to turn it on on D before the game got out of reach. Not easy. Then you have to go and get a good open look and score, after not even running an offense and standing for more than a minute. Not easy.

But hey, it's Kobe's fault. LOL.

Again, I don't think anyone is saying it is 100% Kobe's fault. I'm not sure why people do/say those kinds of things.

But I think it was the greatest contributor in this game, with Hack a Dwight a close second. I mean, I've said it before that we had a 4 pt lead when Hack a Dwight started. We had a 2pt lead when Hack a Dwight finally ended.

If we're going to lose 2 pts every time they do Hack a Dwight then so be it. We should win those games, no?

JGC wrote:

Finwë wrote:

trodgers wrote:

cthroatgtr wrote:Hack a Dwight just destroys the flow of the game....

This is absolutely true.

The funny thing is that some of the very same people who say that Kobe's 1 on 1 game destroys the flow of the game can't see that Hack-a-Dwight does it even moreso.

THIS.
I just posted that in the Hero-Zero thread. For 5 straight possessions our guys walked up the court to go watch a guy brick FTs. That's WAY worse than anything Kobe could do. Then they had to turn it on on D before the game got out of reach. Not easy. Then you have to go and get a good open look and score, after not even running an offense and standing for more than a minute. Not easy.

But hey, it's Kobe's fault. LOL.

Again, I don't think anyone is saying it is 100% Kobe's fault. I'm not sure why people do/say those kinds of things.

But I think it was the greatest contributor in this game, with Hack a Dwight a close second. I mean, I've said it before that we had a 4 pt lead when Hack a Dwight started. We had a 2pt lead when Hack a Dwight finally ended.

If we're going to lose 2 pts every time they do Hack a Dwight then so be it. We should win those games, no?

You're one WMC was Kobe. You picked Kobe as the zero.

He wasn't the greatest contributor to the loss in the game, that's just false.

Finwë wrote:

JGC wrote:

Finwë wrote:

trodgers wrote:This is absolutely true.

The funny thing is that some of the very same people who say that Kobe's 1 on 1 game destroys the flow of the game can't see that Hack-a-Dwight does it even moreso.

THIS.
I just posted that in the Hero-Zero thread. For 5 straight possessions our guys walked up the court to go watch a guy brick FTs. That's WAY worse than anything Kobe could do. Then they had to turn it on on D before the game got out of reach. Not easy. Then you have to go and get a good open look and score, after not even running an offense and standing for more than a minute. Not easy.

But hey, it's Kobe's fault. LOL.

Again, I don't think anyone is saying it is 100% Kobe's fault. I'm not sure why people do/say those kinds of things.

But I think it was the greatest contributor in this game, with Hack a Dwight a close second. I mean, I've said it before that we had a 4 pt lead when Hack a Dwight started. We had a 2pt lead when Hack a Dwight finally ended.

If we're going to lose 2 pts every time they do Hack a Dwight then so be it. We should win those games, no?

You're one WMC was Kobe. You picked Kobe as the zero.

He wasn't the greatest contributor to the loss in the game, that's just false.

My one WMC was Kobe? I don't think I ever said that. I did say "Kobe. Way too many shots" or something along those lines. But I also mentioned that we under utilized Dwight as well.

Kobe was the zero IMO. I'm not the only one that believes that. I just don't think going Iverson helps the team. Do you think it helps the team or hurts the team?

Nothing that Kobe did accomplished anything tonight. If we're sacrificing wins to "gel", then fine, let's play the team concept, work on gelling, and lose some ball games. If we're sacrificing the team concept and "gelling" to get cheap wins, then fine let's abandon the team concept, go hero ball and win some ball games.

We did neither. We missed an opportunity to do some in-game gelling and chalked up another loss. If we're going to lose, then I'd rather we do that trying to form our team identity.

What exactly was the point in him taking 18 shots by halftime exactly? It's another example where Kobe's heart is in the right place (his desire to win), but how he goes about doing it was entirely off base.

JGC, Howard went 5-10 during hack-a-dwight. Look at trodgers' post about settling for 1.00 point per possession, and also consider the effects on the players' rythm and "sync" of the 5 sequences..

I think all these metrics are clouding the simplest of basketball sense here.

The other team is DARING Dwight to get points on free, open looks from 15 ft

When another team disrespects you like that, I believe you should respond. There is nothing typical about game flow during Hack-a-Dwight, so I think %'s should be thrown out the window. It's probably the ball player in me, but I think BOTH free throws should be as good as made. Acknowledgment is not justification for his bad FT shooting.

Maybe you guys are right, maybe Hack-a-Dwight wasn't the issue tonight. I just don't agree.

this teams problem is DEFENSE. yes if dwight hit his ft's the games wouldn't even be close. we give up too many easy baskets and are not hungry enough on defense and don't have that killer defensive mentality as a team.
we are getting big numbers put up on us every night. Offense is not a problem.

Finwë wrote:JGC, Howard went 5-10 during hack-a-dwight. Look at trodgers' post about settling for 1.00 point per possession, and also consider the effects on the players' rythm and "sync" of the 5 sequences..

Yeah I saw that. It's fantastic.

We were up 4 before Hack a Dwight. We were up 2 after Hack a Dwight. That's 2 points. If Hack a Dwight is going to cost us a grand total of 1 basket, then I'm kind of thinking we should be able to beat most teams in spite of it.

I will never defend Dwight's garbage FT shooting. I just don't think in this particular game, it was the primary reason for the loss. I do think it was A reason for the loss though.

I'm thinking that in a game against the Rockets, in the 45 game minutes prior to Hack a Howard, that maybe we'll do enough of the right things so that we can afford a 1 minute span where we go -2. If we're not able to do that, then our problems are bigger than Hack a Howard.