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

Rooscooter wrote:Our defense and offense to a certain extent is the problem not the refs..... Denver shouldn't even be IN a game with this squad if we were playing defense with the same effort as offense....it's that simple. This isn't the same Denver team as last year.... they have taken a pretty big step back IMO and losing to them shouldn't happen.

There were a few bad no calls but the ones saying that it cost us the game are looking for excuses IMO.

Offensively we are only giving Howard touches in lob situations it seems and overall his touches are dwindling from game to game... (sound familiar?). We have Pau running around above the top of the circle being an initiator and shooting 3's.... we have guys like Morris playing and guys like Jamison not....

I could run a pick and roll with the old lady next door and get to the rim uncontested against us right now.... it's that bad out there. Our new center is getting fed up with it now and his frustration is boiling over..... how many of these types of games does it take to light a fire under the rest of the team?....

I agree.

Blaming the refs is a huge copout, I mean huge.

We played with zero energy, especially on defense. We were way too perimeter oriented. I don't think we had any post ups, but Mike 2 hates the post, event though those are high percentage looks, and that favors our personnel. We pretty much let Denver do whatever they wanted out there.

Denver played harder, hustled harder, they were the aggressor. Refs will always favor the aggressor, and Denver was the aggressor last night. They wanted the win and they played like it. We went through the motions, played stupid basketball and lost.

Lethargic defense + built frustration of terrible officiating (culminating in Dwight Howard flagrant) = loss

Screw it. We need defense in the WORST way. Bench Pau start Hill. To offset spacing issues, go with:

Nash
Meeks
Kobe
Hill
D12

Pau and Metta off the bench to lead the bench mob.

I'll stick with my assesment that officiating is killing us more than anything.

Yes, we are still having huge lapses in rotations on defense but it is getting better. Yes, we find it hard to win a game when nearly no one can make a damn shot (esp: Ron and Meeks playing brick city last night). And with all that being said the momentum swings that happen from letting contact go on oneside but allowing touch fouls on the other is costly. I understand people not wanting to acknowledge that because, lets face it, we are the Lakers and we should be better plain and simple. All that being said, when complainers like Kobe stop complaining and just smiles you know its seriously lopsided. We know officiating is lopsided and sometimes we get the calls (Feltons out call late in the NYK) but it seems we are on the otherside more often than not (Pau getting undercut on a basket, Kobe getting hammered over and over again, Meeks getting called for a foul when Chandler jumped over him.....etc.etc.) Everyone is entitled to their opinion mine says the officiating had a huge deal in our loss.

We are what we are. A very skilled, old team. On the second night of a back to back against a George Karl team whose game plan is built around throwing as much youthful energy at us as possible, we're going to lose a good percentage of these games. I really don't see how that will change with the personnel we have.

The brutal truth is that we're going to have to focus on just making the post season and hope to pull a couple of upsets in the playoffs. Certainly not what we all anticipated. By a long shot.

It seems like some people view blaming the refs as beneath them or as a cheap excuse because so many fans of other teams blame the refs every single time they lose. I understand that it does get tiresome and most of the time when fans blame refs it's because they are just being homers.

However, that doesn't mean that believing the refs can affect the outcome of a game isn't warranted in certain matchups. Last night absolutely was one of those games that the refs directly affected the outcome.

Those of you saying that the more aggressive team gets the whistle, what would YOU do if every time you drove into the lane you got hammered and didn't get a call, turned the ball over as a result, and were on your heels as a result of the ensuing fastbreak? Then to top it off, YOU get whistled for touch fouls on the other end? I don't care who who are, that will definitely change the way you approach the game. Not to mention the momentum swings a couple of favorable calls will give you especially at home.

With all that said, last night's game was STILL winnable.

Defense, defense...

I usually hate to blame refs for losses but damn man, was watching the game again at the gym.

Late second quarter, Kobe drives gets major body contact with the defender, misses the shot....no foul. Lawson fast breaks, Nash barely nudges him with this right arm....FOUL...and 1.

It was disgusting.

The aggressors get the call and they did. Yes, there were a couple of bad calls, but that is the NBA. There are always bad calls. My point is that we should not put ourselves in positions where those bad calls can affect the outcome of a game.

Our team does not have great on-court chemistry and they are lacking a singular focus. I am reminded of the 2007-2008 Celtics, when they formed there was a lot of talk about how ridiculous or overpowered a team featuring KG, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce would be, but realistically, for as good as those guys were, they were also all on the steep side of their prime and their success was because the entire team had a singular and focused unity. It was branded around defense, but as the old saying goes, defense is effort, and effort, specifically unified, focused effort from 1-14 on the roster will pretty much always trump on-paper talent.

Things are steadily getting 'better' in a lot of senses, but until this team really starts showing committed, selfless and dynamic effort from the starters to Robert Sacre, it's going to be a grab-bag of production with the only constant being a consistently underwhelming result. (even in Ws)

So now Pau has plantar fascititis. Great.

It seems as though we rely on our talents alone, rather than collective principles which comes from coaching. Just look at how bad our defense was when dwight wasn't there in the 4th. And when nash wasn't there early on, we struggled to play as a team. And I bet if kobe got injured, our offense would take a major hit. That, more than anything worries me, because if one of them goes down, we're not even good, we're average..

easyguy wrote:The aggressors get the call and they did. Yes, there were a couple of bad calls, but that is the NBA. There are always bad calls. My point is that we should not put ourselves in positions where those bad calls can affect the outcome of a game.

Thats crap. Even Stu mentioned in the NYK game that the Lakers were attacking the paint and getting none of the calls. Even though we shoot a lot of 3's we are constantly attacking especially Kobe, MWP and Howard. When a call doesn't get called for us and that turns into a push the other way where they get the touch foul and the And1 that would be a possible 6-point swing. Let that happen several times a game and the outcome can be totally effected by the officiating.

John3:16 wrote:One play in particular stood out to me last night. Kobe goes in, gets hit by 2 defenders, is on the ground. no call. Denver goes flying down the court and Nash barely touched Lawson (if he touched him at all) and it's a foul. How in the world was that more of a foul then what happened to Kobe on the other end?

They didn't call the hip/body-check foul the first time, so they decided not to call it all game long. Else if they did start calling it, it wouldn't be "consistent."

Another play late in the game, Gasol got a nice basket down low, and Faried just walked right into him, pushing him out of bounds, but no call. Gasol almost feel backwards for pete's sake.

puffyusaf#2 wrote:

easyguy wrote:The aggressors get the call and they did. Yes, there were a couple of bad calls, but that is the NBA. There are always bad calls. My point is that we should not put ourselves in positions where those bad calls can affect the outcome of a game.

Thats crap. Even Stu mentioned in the NYK game that the Lakers were attacking the paint and getting none of the calls. Even though we shoot a lot of 3's we are constantly attacking especially Kobe, MWP and Howard. When a call doesn't get called for us and that turns into a push the other way where they get the touch foul and the And1 that would be a possible 6-point swing. Let that happen several times a game and the outcome can be totally effected by the officiating.

Oh well, if Stu said it ... then ... haha.

No one is saying the officiating wasn't bad. You guys keep bringing up like 1 or 2 examples "oh what about that one play where so and so did this?". Great, pick any NBA game and you can bring up more than a handful of bad calls. I mean are you guys new to the NBA? Officiating has been a gripe of fans of every team for years and year now. Maybe the Lakers should just focus on what they can control so they can maximize the possessions when bad calls aren't made then. Because if they are relying on a perfect, or near perfectly officiated game to win then their margin of error is way too low.

In either case, yes the officiating wasn't great but Kobe still shot double the number of free throws of any Nuggets player. And Dwight also, took 50% more FTs in his 27 mins of playing time than any other Nuggets player. We had 30 FTs and the Nuggets had 32 FTs. This isn't to say the officiating was awesome, it's just, that in the bigger picture it clearly didn't give them a major advantage outside of maybe an emotional one.

But I thought we had a smart, veteran team that would be able to play through things like that the way they did against the Knicks.

denimPortugal wrote:Defense, defense...

Did you see any MDA old teams playing defense ?

borri wrote:So now Pau has plantar fascititis. Great.

Saw that. What exactly is that?

odom1year wrote:

denimPortugal wrote:Defense, defense...

Did you see any MDA old teams playing defense ?

I saw them do it the day before against one of the best offensive teams in the league.

JGC wrote:

puffyusaf#2 wrote:

easyguy wrote:The aggressors get the call and they did. Yes, there were a couple of bad calls, but that is the NBA. There are always bad calls. My point is that we should not put ourselves in positions where those bad calls can affect the outcome of a game.

Thats crap. Even Stu mentioned in the NYK game that the Lakers were attacking the paint and getting none of the calls. Even though we shoot a lot of 3's we are constantly attacking especially Kobe, MWP and Howard. When a call doesn't get called for us and that turns into a push the other way where they get the touch foul and the And1 that would be a possible 6-point swing. Let that happen several times a game and the outcome can be totally effected by the officiating.

Oh well, if Stu said it ... then ... haha.

No one is saying the officiating wasn't bad. You guys keep bringing up like 1 or 2 examples "oh what about that one play where so and so did this?". Great, pick any NBA game and you can bring up more than a handful of bad calls. I mean are you guys new to the NBA? Officiating has been a gripe of fans of every team for years and year now. Maybe the Lakers should just focus on what they can control so they can maximize the possessions when bad calls aren't made then. Because if they are relying on a perfect, or near perfectly officiated game to win then their margin of error is way too low.

In either case, yes the officiating wasn't great but Kobe still shot double the number of free throws of any Nuggets player. And Dwight also, took 50% more FTs in his 27 mins of playing time than any other Nuggets player. We had 30 FTs and the Nuggets had 32 FTs. This isn't to say the officiating was awesome, it's just, that in the bigger picture it clearly didn't give them a major advantage outside of maybe an emotional one.

But I thought we had a smart, veteran team that would be able to play through things like that the way they did against the Knicks.

Yes, if Stu points out the officiating and mentions it as a problem then it is significant. Mainly because it isn't somethign he does customarily. So yes that is a big thing.

And I don't know about the other "we guys" but as far as I am concerned it isn't the number of fouls but when and where they are called. Like my example, a foul call at a certain time can be a 4,5 or 6 point swing. Make two calls in a minute and a team can go from being down 1 to being up 8. Ignoring those things is something I personally don't do. Like I said in another thread with no one hitting a shot, Howard getting tossed and the turnovers we were lucky to be in the game.

As far as being a smart veteran team who could play through it.... Our guys are learning each other. I know it is hard for many fans to give them the benefit of the doubt but that is critical to our ability to play through the BS officiating and dumb moves (Howard getting ejected) that we get in games. But hey thats just me.

this is just sad. 30 games in and were under .500? wow. clippers #1 record wow.

when is this team gunna start fixing the same mistakes? winning 5 in a row doesnt really mean much if theyre making the same mistakes after 5 wins...whats the excuse? and dwight....if youre not 100% then make dantoni do something to help him out...

this team needs to have some sort of leadership and come out right every game and do their best on defense helping eachother and the little things. not playing like a unified team right now even during the win streak which was a joke of a schedule.

Finwë wrote:

borri wrote:So now Pau has plantar fascititis. Great.

Saw that. What exactly is that?

Inflammation of the fascia (a fibrous connective tissue) in the arch area of the bottom of your foot.

GoldHammish wrote:

Finwë wrote:

borri wrote:So now Pau has plantar fascititis. Great.

Saw that. What exactly is that?

Inflammation of the fascia (a fibrous connective tissue) in the arch area of the bottom of your foot.

And I assume there are different degrees of gravity. I wonder how serious his case is. Is it less serious than in Ron's case some time ago?

puffyusaf#2 wrote:

easyguy wrote:The aggressors get the call and they did. Yes, there were a couple of bad calls, but that is the NBA. There are always bad calls. My point is that we should not put ourselves in positions where those bad calls can affect the outcome of a game.

Thats crap. Even Stu mentioned in the NYK game that the Lakers were attacking the paint and getting none of the calls. Even though we shoot a lot of 3's we are constantly attacking especially Kobe, MWP and Howard. When a call doesn't get called for us and that turns into a push the other way where they get the touch foul and the And1 that would be a possible 6-point swing. Let that happen several times a game and the outcome can be totally effected by the officiating.

So Puffy, is it a conspiracy?...... or just circumstance? Why play or follow the team if you believe it's a conspiracy? If it's circumstance it will even out in the end won't it? Reversion to the Mean or the Law of Averages will take over at some point.

We already shoot more free throws than anyone in the league.... by a long ways in fact over the teams that everyone seems to think get favored so I just don't see the "Stern is out to get us angle" here....

Either way I don't think there is a way you can pin the Denver loss on the Refs.... Age, inconstancy, system not matching the personnel and rigid coaching style seem to be a more appropriate target to me.....

Finwë wrote:

borri wrote:So now Pau has plantar fascititis. Great.

Saw that. What exactly is that?

Sore foot......

how annoying is it to watch barnes shoot and play so well for the clippers...