Enough with all this offense! We need DEFENSE!!!

We need to wake up and see that offense isn't our problem, its DEFENSE!! I've said it before and I'll say it again, if Mike "defensive specialist" brown can't even handle our defensive issues, then he's absolutely USELESS and I'll have NO problems saying that he needs to GO!!!

Offense is a huge, disgusting problem. How can you say offense is not a problem?

24 turnovers and the Blazers score a ton of points off of them. That tends to improve your FG%. They're also a team that loves to get out in transition and that feeds right into that.

Yes the defense still is a problem, but don't worry we have a defensive wizard as a head coach. At least that's what we've been told.

It's both ends of the court man, it's both.

Weezy wrote:It's both ends of the court man, it's both.

This. If our offense yields a total of 10 assists from our starting backcourt through two games, and our starting backcourt consists of Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash, then our offense has problems.

I think tonight the biggest problem was defense. Offense is still clearly a huge issue, especially timing, positioning, spacing and taking care of the ball, but tonight if we played strong defensively we would've won.

I'm sorry but I don't know what you all are thinking. I don't know if you weren't watching the game or are just plain blind, but the lakers had to players score over 30. We shot 50% from the field. How in the WORLD is this a problem of the offense???? I'll take an argument of turnovers as a bigger issue, but OFFENSE?? Lol i'm sorry but that is just WRONG! We easily scored over a hundred, what more do u want?? The defense gave up 80+ points by the end of the THIRD QUARTER!! We couldn't stop anyone to save our lives. Can't even believe ppl are still debating offense being a bigger issue. I guess you all will come around on Friday. I can honestly see them scoring over 120pts on us. Just be prepared, they're going to embarrass us on national tv. paul, bledsoe n crawford are going to eat us alive if this defense doesn't magically improve. Might not even watch. Cause it'll be a blowout....

King of Clutch wrote:We easily scored over a hundred, what more do u want??

Quit turning the ball over.

Kobe said in an interview yesterday that they can't afford to turn the ball over because they're too old to get back in transition consistently. Pretty terrible for him to say that and then the team follows it up with 24 turnovers with him contributing 7 of them.

He's just telling the truth. 4 of them are old, and Dwight is coming off back surgery. They need to take care of the ball.

The offense wastes too much time off the shot clock. This results in poor shot attempts, and transition opportunities for the opponents.

^We shot 49FG% against the Mavericks and 50FG% against the Blazers. The shot selection is fine. The turnovers, missed FT's, and bad defense are not.

Let's not forget that the refs totally hosed us tonight. At the half the Lakers had taken about 20-22 free throws, they only got 32 for the game. The blazers had only a few free throws in the first half, in the first 16 minutes of the second half, they had 18 more...outpacing the lakers by nearly 20 FTs in that span. Devin Ebanks was the first victim of the horrid, bought referee performance...getting called for 3 highly questionable touch fouls in the span of less than 20 seconds.

In the first half, Dwight, Kobe and Metta all had 1 foul each...after the first 18 minutes of the second half, they all had 5. The Blazers, despite playing much more physically than the Lakers on defense, "SOMEHOW" managed to get whistled for NINE (9) fewer personal fouls. No blazer had more than 4 fouls, except Wesley Matthew's, who should have fouled out of the game in the early 3rd quarter, if he was being held to the same standard of contact as Lakers defenders.

I'm not big on excuses, but the refs flat out decided the game in that 15-18 minutes stretch to start the second half. Dwight is not liking the new substandard treatment he's getting from the refs...already two bad moments of losing his cool in frustration over the Lakers ref disadvantage. I suggest he get used to it, the refs have to make up for our increased talent by giving the opponent even more leeway for physical contact per play.

revgen wrote:^We shot 49FG% against the Mavericks and 50FG% against the Blazers. The shot selection is fine. The turnovers, missed FT's, and bad defense are not.

This all day long. The turnovers last night were just unreal.

King of Clutch wrote:I'm sorry but I don't know what you all are thinking. I don't know if you weren't watching the game or are just plain blind, but the lakers had to players score over 30. We shot 50% from the field. How in the WORLD is this a problem of the offense???? I'll take an argument of turnovers as a bigger issue, but OFFENSE?? Lol i'm sorry but that is just WRONG! We easily scored over a hundred, what more do u want?? The defense gave up 80+ points by the end of the THIRD QUARTER!! We couldn't stop anyone to save our lives. Can't even believe ppl are still debating offense being a bigger issue. I guess you all will come around on Friday. I can honestly see them scoring over 120pts on us. Just be prepared, they're going to embarrass us on national tv. paul, bledsoe n crawford are going to eat us alive if this defense doesn't magically improve. Might not even watch. Cause it'll be a blowout....

For me, it's not the fact that we scored over 100PPG that settles the offense discussion. For me it is whether or not HOW we scored those 100+PPG is a recipe for postseason success and I don't think in this case, against the Blazers, it was.

When Kobe and D12 score 30+ each, we should be well over 120PPG and bordering on 130PPG. We're not going to get D12 and Kobe scoring 30+ every night. If Kobe has to play over 38 MPG and Dwight over 41 MPG for us to score 1 point less than the 08-09 team used to average every night, that is NOT good offense IMO. If this game is the trademark of our offense going forward, then we should trade Nash.

This game showed to me, that when our offense is NOT very efficient, we still have the players at hand to step up and do a little extra to try to get that win. It didn't show me that this is what we should come to expect offensively from the new look Lakers at all.

ElginTheGreat wrote:

revgen wrote:^We shot 49FG% against the Mavericks and 50FG% against the Blazers. The shot selection is fine. The turnovers, missed FT's, and bad defense are not.

This all day long. The turnovers last night were just unreal.

Shooting a high % against these two teams is not really an accomplishment.... neither is much of a defensive powerhouse. Howard saw almost no resistance whatsoever other than the intentional fouls.... As much as I wish he would....... He's not going to shoot 78% from the line this year..... so if he had a more "normal" night at the line we would have been out of the game earlier than we were.

We were -12 in turnovers.... that can't happen to this team because we can't make those possessions up by turning up the tempo of the game.... Our defense doesn't create turnovers either so taking care of the ball is paramount for this team.

The turnovers were bad but the defense was worse. Way too much standing around.... Howard had one defensive rebound at the Half and only 3 at the end of the 3rd quarter. Pau wasn't any better either.

We have no defense, and when we actually play good defense we give up the offensive rebound anyway.

defense stinks, blazers got off whatever shot they wanted most of the time

ElginTheGreat wrote:

revgen wrote:^We shot 49FG% against the Mavericks and 50FG% against the Blazers. The shot selection is fine. The turnovers, missed FT's, and bad defense are not.

This all day long. The turnovers last night were just unreal.

A number of the turnovers were ref assisted though.

kray28 wrote:A number of the turnovers were ref assisted though.

Yep...Amen brother! The refs are very often a 6th man for the opposition against the Lakers, and especially in Portland, in San Antonio, against Miami, Boston or OKC, and in most primetime network national broadcasts. Last night they were so far up Portland's rear end that I couldn't tell where the Blazers ended and the refs began...

People on here need to reckonize (intentionally misspelled) that a team's defense is only as good as the amount of body contact the refs are choosing to allow on a given play/possession/day. For some reason, in the game...and especially in the third quarter/second half...the refs suddenly decided that the Blazers could hand check, elbow, double arm bar, go over the back, step under, face guard, flop and elbow tap the Lakers, but the Lakers couldn't even make contact most of the time without a whistle, even in situations where the original rules of basketball allow contact.

My issue with the Lakers is that they tend to let the biased referees get into their head. They start spending more time trying to prove points to the refs about the inequality of the contact allowed for each team, and arguing each bad call, and they stop focusing on being able to recognize what the refs are allowing and adjust to it... no matter how much of a disadvantage that creates. They also need to STOP SAYING ANYTHING OR REACTING TO ANY BAD CALLS. Just play.

You gotta take what the ref gives you, lol

SMH at all the ref talk... In the first half, we went to the freethrow line every other time down the floor and we were down

The turnovers and Dwight not being himself yet are to blame, not the refs

kray28 wrote:

ElginTheGreat wrote:

revgen wrote:^We shot 49FG% against the Mavericks and 50FG% against the Blazers. The shot selection is fine. The turnovers, missed FT's, and bad defense are not.

This all day long. The turnovers last night were just unreal.

A number of the turnovers were ref assisted though.

Well, I can't argue with that at all. We definitely got hosed on some calls out there.

Have no fear guys! We have Mike Brown... defense specialist!!

Haven't had the chance to watch any game so far ... but from I've read some blame Brown ... is Brown? or is the Princeton offense? or is it both?

Rooscooter wrote:

ElginTheGreat wrote:

revgen wrote:^We shot 49FG% against the Mavericks and 50FG% against the Blazers. The shot selection is fine. The turnovers, missed FT's, and bad defense are not.

This all day long. The turnovers last night were just unreal.

Shooting a high % against these two teams is not really an accomplishment.... neither is much of a defensive powerhouse. Howard saw almost no resistance whatsoever other than the intentional fouls.... As much as I wish he would....... He's not going to shoot 78% from the line this year..... so if he had a more "normal" night at the line we would have been out of the game earlier than we were.

We were -12 in turnovers.... that can't happen to this team because we can't make those possessions up by turning up the tempo of the game.... Our defense doesn't create turnovers either so taking care of the ball is paramount for this team.

The turnovers were bad but the defense was worse. Way too much standing around.... Howard had one defensive rebound at the Half and only 3 at the end of the 3rd quarter. Pau wasn't any better either.

We will see on the shooting %. I feel like Nash (even with limited playing time) and Dwight are having the effect on Kobe, Pau, etc that I thought they would have in getting them some better looks (I have not looked at the stats so, that may not hold up upon a closer look). I really think that once we get used to playing with each other and some kind of flow on offense we will be able to shoot and score pretty well against any team.

I agree with with everything else you said.