LQOTD: Utah's Bad O or LA's Good D?

Utah managed 84 points on 42% shooting. They hit only 21% of their threes.

What was more responsible for that performance?

Utah is a playoff bound team right now who use their big men wonderfully.

We did a great job defensively against a team that is frankly playing better than we are.

This was on us.

Utah didn't look at all in sync last night, which caused them to miss a lot of shots.

To answer your question, I think it had more to do with the Lakers defense more than anything. MWP was all over Millsap and Jefferson wasn't budging D12 or surprisingly Pau. Those are their key guys, so stopping them really put the onus on the other players.

We held those two to 10/25 from the field. I thought the only two people we had trouble with last night was Hayward and Favors.

Considering how shoddy everyone's reports are on the defense and that Utah runs that disciplined offense under Corbin? It could have been the latter.

neither because it's only 1 game. "Will they sustain it?" is the bigger and more pressing question.

dak22 wrote:neither because it's only 1 game. "Will they sustain it?" is the bigger and more pressing question.

That makes no sense man. Neither? It was obviously one of the two or both. How could them sustaining it be the answer to how they won the game?...

100% our Defense.

therealdeal wrote:

dak22 wrote:neither because it's only 1 game. "Will they sustain it?" is the bigger and more pressing question.

That makes no sense man. Neither? It was obviously one of the two or both. How could them sustaining it be the answer to how they won the game?...

It was actually their bad D and our good O.

scissors wrote:100% our Defense.

It was plain to see that it was our D.

Homies played ball last night. They played ball.

I think it was a combination of both, but their offense looked more out of sync because of our offense. I feel with the ball movement last night and improved effort, all players got "theres" in the game. When you see everyone scoring and making plays they are happier, and we all know the talent is ridiculous with our team. When the team is having fun a clicking, I think it puts too much on the opponents offense and it gets into their mindset. If we play like that, that will get into a good amount of teams heads and will result in easy wins. The question is, is it just one game or can they keep it up?

Weezy wrote:

more lakers d, but i'm with the rock: i want to see the lakers stop a team with a decent pg before i get too excited. when mo's out, utah's a good matchup for a team that's big and slow on d like the lakers. none of their perimeter guys have much speed, and tinsley and watson allow nash to play the pg position on d and be hidden. almost all of the lakers' problems on that end stem from containing dribble penetration from the 1-3 spots (and their terrible subsequent rotations). we didn't really get to see if that was fixed to any degree on friday.