Pau Thread: Surgery a success; now rehab & rest for 12 weeks

^Pau's problem never has been "breaking out"

thats a big IF though on your part. Pau hasn't shown the type of heart and commitment to the Lakers that it takes to win championships. He kind of settled with a couple of rings and is enjoying his life in LA. For Spain, he still tries his best, I absolutely cannot say that he always tried his best with us in the last 2 years, sometimes he didn't.

Texas Lakers Fan wrote:Great performance by Pau. Kinda feel bad for him. Losing to the same team in back to back Olympics. That's gotta sting.

Eh, USA's roster is so much more talented it's extremely tough for any team to beat them. But Pau's Spain team played them very close twice.

The Original 81 wrote:

Texas Lakers Fan wrote:Great performance by Pau. Kinda feel bad for him. Losing to the same team in back to back Olympics. That's gotta sting.

Eh, USA's roster is so much more talented it's extremely tough for any team to beat them. But Pau's Spain team played them very close twice.

If they had Rubio, I actually think they might beat this Team USA. Spain's size advantage inside was pretty huge.

Pau was incredible!

Pau goes at DPOY Tyson Chandler twice and scores both times and dominates 3rd quarter.......

Pau posts up Kenneth Faried, gets the ball and has no idea what to do.....

Dude better starting bringing it on the Lakers, as hard as he does for Spain. His play today, ticked me off, more than I was excited, because his play today was nothing like that for the Lakers in the last two playoffs.

kray28 wrote:

The Original 81 wrote:

Texas Lakers Fan wrote:Great performance by Pau. Kinda feel bad for him. Losing to the same team in back to back Olympics. That's gotta sting.

Eh, USA's roster is so much more talented it's extremely tough for any team to beat them. But Pau's Spain team played them very close twice.

If they had Rubio, I actually think they might beat this Team USA. Spain's size advantage inside was pretty huge.

That's easy to say though. If US had Rose, Howard, Bosh, and Wade they would have probably broken even more records.

kray28 wrote:

The Original 81 wrote:

Texas Lakers Fan wrote:Great performance by Pau. Kinda feel bad for him. Losing to the same team in back to back Olympics. That's gotta sting.

Eh, USA's roster is so much more talented it's extremely tough for any team to beat them. But Pau's Spain team played them very close twice.

If they had Rubio, I actually think they might beat this Team USA. Spain's size advantage inside was pretty huge.

agree ... Rubio is difference maker ... I hope he gets back all-right ... anyway congrats USA guys and for olympics in general

If Pau played as hard for us as he does for Spain, we'd have had no issues with him the past 2 seasons. That being said, I think coaching played a factor somewhat last year too.

Doc Brown wrote:Pau goes at DPOY Tyson Chandler twice and scores both times and dominates 3rd quarter.......

Pau posts up Kenneth Faried, gets the ball and has no idea what to do.....

Dude better starting bringing it on the Lakers, as hard as he does for Spain. His play today, ticked me off, more than I was excited, because his play today was nothing like that for the Lakers in the last two playoffs.

Defenders with lower leverage (think back to Chuck Hayes, and Scola for a minutes) do better in the post defending against Pau. Shorter/stronger defenders are just one of his Achilles Heels.

Weezy wrote:If Pau played as hard for us as he does for Spain, we'd have had no issues with him the past 2 seasons. That being said, I think coaching played a factor somewhat last year too.

You don't say. I seem to remember Mike Clown deciding that Pau was going to be stretch PF for us.

Anyone that thinks Pau should play like this effort every game are fooling themselves. That was the more important game of his life.

bystander wrote:Anyone that thinks Pau should play like this effort every game are fooling themselves. That was the more important game of his life.

If he would play like this in elimination games I would be happy. I don't expect it from him every game.
But if you want to be considered great, you have to bring it in the post-season. And Pau played some incredibly lousy "very important" games last year.

And at the end of the day, the Lakers write his checks so he better feel commited to bring it for them.

bystander wrote:Anyone that thinks Pau should play like this effort every game are fooling themselves. That was the more important game of his life.

The Olympics are a short sprint, the NBA regular season and the playoffs are a marathon. You can only keep that instensity for so long. The Lakers went through stretch where Pau played something like 18 straight months of basketball...it eventually got to him when he had to shoulder the full load to start the 2010-2011 season with Bynum out for the first 25 or so games.

bystander wrote:Anyone that thinks Pau should play like this effort every game are fooling themselves. That was the more important game of his life.

Yeah well we're paying him 19 million dollars, every game here should be the most important of his life.

My old football coach had a saying: "be careful when you show me everything you've got because I'm going to expect that EVERY play". Pau better step the f*** up this season. This is his third chance, Kobe stuck up for him, and he's playing for a championship.

Best player of the Olympic gold medal game. He just ran out of gas a little bit and then got poked in the eye.

https://twitter.com/LakersReporter/status/234689706363846656

* @paugasol showed what he can do when left single covered iin the post n the 3rd. He scored on 6 of 7 possessions w/Kevin Love on him.

I think the insane amount of mpg Pau was playing the last two seasons played a huge role in his subpar performance. Now with the addition of Jamison he'll get some rest.

therealdeal wrote:

kray28 wrote:

The Original 81 wrote:

Texas Lakers Fan wrote:Great performance by Pau. Kinda feel bad for him. Losing to the same team in back to back Olympics. That's gotta sting.

Eh, USA's roster is so much more talented it's extremely tough for any team to beat them. But Pau's Spain team played them very close twice.

If they had Rubio, I actually think they might beat this Team USA. Spain's size advantage inside was pretty huge.

That's easy to say though. If US had Rose, Howard, Bosh, and Wade they would have probably broken even more records.

Yeah if Spain had Rubio they might have won but I think Howard was a bigger loss for us.

Look guys, I won't argue about Pau performances back to back playoffs. I still can't believe his problem is effort, but mosty something mentally. My take is he wasn't up to it in the last Phil run, and unmotivated with Mike Brown last year. Still his fault, but effort i don't think that was the issue.

But you can't compare a gold medal game for a athlete than any professional game. It's way bigger.

bystander wrote:Look guys, I won't argue about Pau performances back to back playoffs. I still can't believe his problem is effort, but mosty something mentally. My take is he wasn't up to it in the last Phil run, and unmotivated with Mike Brown last year. Still his fault, but effort i don't think that was the issue.

But you can't compare a gold medal game for a athlete than any professional game. It's way bigger.

- He just lost his purpose for playing basketball with the Lakers. He looked so confused last 2 years, I think he's rejeuvenated now
- He didn't fit well with Bynum on the floor, now the low post is all his
- Too many minutes. He shouldn't be playing the amount of minutes that he does

I expect an All star return to form from him this year

Sorry, I know gold medal games are important, but when you get paid 19 million dollars per season that should be pretty damn important too, you should be giving everything you have at least more than half the time.

The Rock wrote:

bystander wrote:Look guys, I won't argue about Pau performances back to back playoffs. I still can't believe his problem is effort, but mosty something mentally. My take is he wasn't up to it in the last Phil run, and unmotivated with Mike Brown last year. Still his fault, but effort i don't think that was the issue.

But you can't compare a gold medal game for a athlete than any professional game. It's way bigger.

- He just lost his purpose for playing basketball with the Lakers. He looked so confused last 2 years, I think he's rejeuvenated now
- He didn't fit well with Bynum on the floor, now the low post is all his
- Too many minutes. He shouldn't be playing the amount of minutes that he does

I expect an All star return to form from him this year

LOL. Lakers trolling with four all stars in their starting lineup.

I don't know, I saw a lot of effort on Pau's part feeding Bynum down low... since that was what he was asked to do.

kray28 wrote:

bystander wrote:Anyone that thinks Pau should play like this effort every game are fooling themselves. That was the more important game of his life.

The Olympics are a short sprint, the NBA regular season and the playoffs are a marathon. You can only keep that instensity for so long. The Lakers went through stretch where Pau played something like 18 straight months of basketball...it eventually got to him when he had to shoulder the full load to start the 2010-2011 season with Bynum out for the first 25 or so games.

Yeah, the wear and tear has started to weigh down on Gasol. While a viable backup C is a necessity on other teams, the Lakers had an unique three-headed monster of Bynum-Gasol-Odom which allowed a starter-caliber front court nearly full time because Gasol excelled at both C/PF. However, it did require a lot of minutes from Pau (averaging nearly 40 minutes per from 07-10 playoffs) but he was able to sustain a high level of play despite it. It definitely didn't help when Bynum was out forcing Gasol to shoulder more of the load on top of this. The last two seasons have shown me that he can't do this anymore and having a viable backup C is not quite the luxury it was before. Hill can help out in this regard and Jamison can bring back what the Lakers lost when Odom got shipped out.

bruddahmanmatt wrote:

The Rock wrote:

bystander wrote:Look guys, I won't argue about Pau performances back to back playoffs. I still can't believe his problem is effort, but mosty something mentally. My take is he wasn't up to it in the last Phil run, and unmotivated with Mike Brown last year. Still his fault, but effort i don't think that was the issue.

But you can't compare a gold medal game for a athlete than any professional game. It's way bigger.

- He just lost his purpose for playing basketball with the Lakers. He looked so confused last 2 years, I think he's rejeuvenated now
- He didn't fit well with Bynum on the floor, now the low post is all his
- Too many minutes. He shouldn't be playing the amount of minutes that he does

I expect an All star return to form from him this year

LOL. Lakers trolling with four all stars in their starting lineup.

when I look through the pictures from the Olympics, Kobe is always sitting next to Iggy and Melo, probaly recruiting a 5th All star in the lineup