WMC 12/13: Mercy kill. (0-4)

People are saying a "win is a win" but I don't buy that at all. How you win matters a lot. What I'm seeing right now is we're aren't the dominating team we need to be in order to go 21-9 to end the season and ride a hot streak into the playoffs. We still look like the inconsistent group of individuals that is having trouble finding a comfort zone to win games without much effort (like what we saw with the repeat Lakers). We couldn't even blow the Suns out on our home floor and actually almost lost the game.

Like Finwe I don't feel good at all about the Clippers game, they have been amazing these past few games meanwhile we've looked average to just flat out bad.

8-3 in the last 11, havent lost at home since the Miami game on Jan 17. I missed the game but when you're battling a playoff spot, missing key players & have some tired injured players you'll take any wins as they come. God I hope we beat the Clippers on Thursday I've been thoroughly disappointed with the effort both the times we've played them from everyone outside of Kobe

Crawford will light it up and Paul.

not looking forward to the game.

people want the Lakers to win with style points a win is a win when your in this situation. take'm anyway you can get'm

I just wanted to whine a little about our schedule....

We're playing in Denver on February 25th (we receive Dallas on the 24th) and we also played in Denver on December 26th (and we received the Knicks on the 25th).

I don't like the fact that they're making us play two back to backs in Denver of all places.

MDA is the worse coach in the NBA. how in the world do we hire 2 worthless coaches in a row?

Win is a win, but...ugly game!

clippers game is a loss. this one made me feel dirty. the suns are a terrible basketball team, and the lakers have struggled with them twice in the past couple of weeks. probably what bothered me most is that the halfcourt d was actually pretty solid. phx got like 1/4 of their total points on run outs, which is a symptom of terrible offense and lazy transition d. against the clippers, that could lead to a 30 point loss.

It's very disappointing that we just EXPECT losses now against any top teams....and knowing the Clippers, they'll LOSE to the Rockets tonight and then be ticked off and win BIG against us....that will just cap off a terrible run before the all star break....

What would be amazing is if the CLippers can beat the Rockets tonight and then lay down against us tomorrow...at least we will have gained a full game on the Rockets...need JAZZ to lose tonight as well....

The Clippers are probably going to take advantage of our lack of size. I'm surprised the FO hasn't acted on getting another big to this rotation, yet.

We still have Dwight, Jamison, Clark.

Deandre doesn't really have much of his own offensive game. He relies on others creating for him -- so good team defense will help more than anything.

Blake is a tough guard for anyone. I usually like Pau on him...but Clark can't body up with him. So with that in mind, we might see some D12 doubles with Clark, opening up easy buckets for DeAndre.

If not that, then Metta will double up on him giving Butler/Barnes/whoever open looks and open lanes. That's where team defense comes in.

We should keep Dwight under the basket and use Metta or Kobe to double down on Blake, but that will mean we need to have outstanding help defense or we're going to get penetrated and embarrassed.

Jamison/Clark/Howard will have to get the boards though, that's where they can take the most "advantage", and all of them can be double digit rebounders.

Oh, and there's the CP3 issue. But Kobe did the best anyone could last time.

^^^You forget their ENTIRE bench will kill ours

Well DHD was talking about our lack of size. I outlined how we could deal with their theoretical advantages, concluding that only CP3 was the real issue if we rebound and play great team D.

I don't really see Odom and Turiaf giving us issues, so that was moot to this immediate discussion.

But yes, their bench will be an issue.

hollywood swinger wrote:MDA is the worse coach in the NBA. how in the world do we hire 2 worthless coaches in a row?

When the same clueless guy does the hiring, that's how you get 2 in a row. It could be 3 at some point.

If you think MDA is the worst coach in the league then start watching teams that aren't the Lakers. You don't know what you're talking about

JoelMyersScrotalSack wrote:If you think MDA is the worst coach in the league then start watching teams that aren't the Lakers. You don't know what you're talking about

Dude, I've seen posters in here claim MWP is the worst player in the league. LOL. It's funny because people always like to say "watch the games" whenever someone comes in with stats, but most people haven't watched the games.

JoelMyersScrotalSack wrote:People are saying a "win is a win" but I don't buy that at all. How you win matters a lot. What I'm seeing right now is we're aren't the dominating team we need to be in order to go 21-9 to end the season and ride a hot streak into the playoffs. We still look like the inconsistent group of individuals that is having trouble finding a comfort zone to win games without much effort (like what we saw with the repeat Lakers). We couldn't even blow the Suns out on our home floor and actually almost lost the game.

Like Finwe I don't feel good at all about the Clippers game, they have been amazing these past few games meanwhile we've looked average to just flat out bad.

What upset me most about the Phoenix win was that we didn't seem to take them seriously for the first half, often goofing off and playing too loose.

When we realized we could actually lose the game, we got serious and crawled all the way back to win, so I guess that's one thing we can take away from this game.

Hopefully this means we'll take the Clippers seriously from the get-go tomorrow and win it.

I'll be honest I have very little confidence in the Lakers beating the Clippers tomorrow. I hope we can win but its not lookin good. They have so many mismatches in their favor, for the 1st time in a long time I feel like we're at a talent disadvantage heading into a game. It doesnt help that Dwight is having whatever issues of his own + MWP struggling.

Some interesting numbers for the season we score 101.85 points per game good for 6th in the league. We give up 100.75 points a game. 6th worst

Over the last 10 games where Kobe has started facilitating (mostly with either Gasol or Howard out), we're scoring 99.7 points a game. 11th best. Same stretch of games defensively we give up 97.4 points a game. 11th best. So even though Kobe is facilitating and cut down his scoring, our offense has become slightly worse but we have become much better defensively.

The Rock wrote:Some interesting numbers for the season we score 101.85 points per game good for 6th in the league. We give up 100.75 points a game. 6th worst

Over the last 10 games where Kobe has started facilitating (mostly with either Gasol or Howard out), we're scoring 99.7 points a game. 11th best. Same stretch of games defensively we give up 97.4 points a game. 11th best. So even though Kobe is facilitating and cut down his scoring, our offense has become slightly worse but we have become much better defensively.

3 of those games were without Dwight. And 1 of them was without Metta. And 4 without Pau. Now, I know Pau is no defensive juggernaut but he is our only 7-footer so he's still a big inside.

At any rate, I think this goes to show that in general, the theory that playing as a team offensively, would lead to the team playing better defensively. It makes sense, it's just nice to see it in action.

Looking at past 11 games (Kobe has been dishing in last 11 games), we're allowing 44.6% shooting compared to 45.2% shooting in games prior to the last 11.

Pace has dipped slightly which helps in the opp PPG department as we've gone from 87.3 opponent FGA per game down to 86.2 opponent FGA per game in the past 11.

Opponents are making 38.5 FG per game in the past 11, compared to 39.5 in games prior.

Not a massive difference numbers wise, but people need to remember this is per game. To hold opponents to a full percentage point lower every single night can make a difference.

hollywood swinger wrote:MDA is the worse coach in the NBA. how in the world do we hire 2 worthless coaches in a row?

Lil Jimmy says hi

The Rock wrote:Some interesting numbers for the season we score 101.85 points per game good for 6th in the league. We give up 100.75 points a game. 6th worst

Over the last 10 games where Kobe has started facilitating (mostly with either Gasol or Howard out), we're scoring 99.7 points a game. 11th best. Same stretch of games defensively we give up 97.4 points a game. 11th best. So even though Kobe is facilitating and cut down his scoring, our offense has become slightly worse but we have become much better defensively.

You can't really go based on that though bc our pace has changed as well. I think our offense has stayed about the same since December (7th-8th)

But our defense has improved considerably, we were 24th in points given up per 100 possession at our worst and hovered around 21 for a while. Now we're 15th which is about where MDA's Suns were ranked. I think we can improve upon that a lot though.

The Rock wrote:I'll be honest I have very little confidence in the Lakers beating the Clippers tomorrow. I hope we can win but its not lookin good. They have so many mismatches in their favor, for the 1st time in a long time I feel like we're at a talent disadvantage heading into a game. It doesnt help that Dwight is having whatever issues of his own + MWP struggling.

We can easily keep up with the Clippers. It all comes down to Nash and how much he makes CP3 work defensively. It would be so nice to see Kobe guarding CP3, and then have Nash initiate the offense majority of the time hes on the court to make CP3 work.

This is a game where im so glad we dont have Pau. I look forward to not seeing Griffin destroy us in every way imagineable. I hope Clark does a good job on him.

WMC; The game is nationally televised on TNT. So, that mean TWN doesn't have the game, and I have to listen to Steve Kerr broadcasting. He's awful. I can't stand him. I hate to have the TV on Mute, but I'm thinking about it...

TheOp wrote:

The Rock wrote:I'll be honest I have very little confidence in the Lakers beating the Clippers tomorrow. I hope we can win but its not lookin good. They have so many mismatches in their favor, for the 1st time in a long time I feel like we're at a talent disadvantage heading into a game. It doesnt help that Dwight is having whatever issues of his own + MWP struggling.

We can easily keep up with the Clippers. It all comes down to Nash and how much he makes CP3 work defensively. It would be so nice to see Kobe guarding CP3, and then have Nash initiate the offense majority of the time hes on the court to make CP3 work.

This is a game where im so glad we dont have Pau. I look forward to not seeing Griffin destroy us in every way imagineable. I hope Clark does a good job on him.

IMO the difference is the bench, if Clipps have the lead our bench will not cut into it. This bench is almost like the bench we've had last year, if things are going well they do well if things are going bad they do even worse. If we have the lead the bench will surely give it away.