Mon 5/14 - Lakers @ Thunder - Game 1 - Predictions/Comments

"4 turnovers by the thunder who led the regular season in turnovers per game.."

trodgers wrote:It's a huge win, but it's only one.

win by 1, win by 100...you still only won one game. that is our beacon of hope.

JGC wrote:I'll post this question in LD later, but is it just me or do these Laker teams just absolutely fold like no other? Boston game, Dallas, now OKC.

Dont get how a team can just fold like that, especially one led by Kobe. Sad. OKC crowd is hardcore. They are still chanting OKC with a minute left up 30. Thats pretty awesome.

To be fair to the Lakers and Lakers fans at Staples, those guys at OKC don't know what it feels like to win a championship let alone multiple championships. Of course they are gonna get excited and be all in the game til the end.

People and players of LA have that been there and done that attitude it seems like.

Can OKC be this hot again Wed? They may come close but Lakers need to get serious.

noobiew wrote:Dammit, dagger from Fisher

LOL.

I love you guys that say it's only 1 game. I bet you guys said the same thing vs Mavs last season. Open your eyes vatos, it's over.

I think we need to give GLock a look...

and Pau/Bynum talking at end of the game on the bench...I already like what I see...Game 2 can't come soon enough....

embarassing

trodgers wrote:LA's starters look spent.

It's their own fault. Take care of Denver in 5 and they don't have to deal with the nightmare that is 4 games in 6 days.

Finwë wrote:"4 turnovers by the thunder who led the regular season in turnovers per game.."

They won't come close to this performance next game. If they do they deserve to be champs.

Lakers know what they need to do to for game 2.

Weezy wrote:I stopped watching this game an hour ago in favor of the How I Met Your Mother season finale, I feel sorry for those that stuck around, must have been torture.

I know, I should have done that. Now I gotta hear the chuck talk smack.

OneMic wrote:I love you guys that say it's only 1 game. I bet you guys said the same thing vs Mavs last season. Open your eyes vatos, it's over.

yeah beating. but one game and you say such stupid [Swearing is not permitted at Clublakers. You must edit this post prior to submitting.] ? WOW

Looking at this team and how the season has gone. In my opinion a big reason why the lakers struggle so much is because of the Lack of scoring the get from the bench and the stagnent offense they run.

I truely believe that if Brown would have developed rookies such as G lock, we would have had a better chance of contending this year. Unforunately, this was not the case. For this reason, we have a team they will not win. At mid season, my dream team would have been the starters we have now and G lock leading the second unit. He is a rookie, but he has game. A full regular season could have had this guy be our danny green.

A poor POOR job done by Brown. Playing players like Murphy n Mc Roberts and the second to last game putting hill as the new 2nd unit big. He just never had a clue.

yup right . if lakers had close out denver in 5 games then we won t look like he looked tonight most of the game. tired and exhausted . so lakers are guilty for that on their own . but lakers will not play so lousy again . i can t believe it, so i have hopes that lakers can steal game 2 but they must play 100 percent better

kobebryant248 wrote:

OneMic wrote:I love you guys that say it's only 1 game. I bet you guys said the same thing vs Mavs last season. Open your eyes vatos, it's over.

yeah beating. but one game and you say such stupid [Swearing is not permitted at Clublakers. You must edit this post prior to submitting.] ? WOW

Yea keep chanting that si se pude bro.

don t give up on lakers . yeah they lost badly. yeah they got a beating and thrashing. but cmon guys i can t think that they will play so poorly and lousy like they played in game 1 but they have to play like i said a 100 percent better game then tonight to have a chance to steal one game.

ive been bagging on mb for not playing ebanks or especially glock...but with the shortened season and literally no training camp...i can understand why glock and other rookies dont get mins. i guarantee if we had a real training camp to develop glock and implement him into the system he'd be playing backup 2 and blake only backup 1.

so i dont really blame mb for this but i dont have anyone else to blame and mb is an idiot so everything is his fault.

as for the rookies in general...i thought the 4th quarter against scrubs they played decent. i think morris on fisher was good minus that 3 but thats what you expect from fish...i think rookies bring the energy on d which is what we need. morris caused fisher to play "lakers fisher dribble around and do nothing ball". that bothersome d causes turnovers for this team...smothering westbrook does for sure; kobe needs to guard him all game and the bigs gotta step up (PAU!) and cover the numbers kobe will lose from putting energy on d. i know that tonight he guarded some westbrook but he was tired from game 7 (everyone was still...there fault though) and wasnt as effective as he normally is. if the rest of our team played that kind of rookie energetic d...we could stop and bother some shooters and cause them to miss or defer or turn it over. force them to play post up / 3 point shooting game not jumpshooting. also takes time off the clock and maybe cause them to rush their possession.

ebanks getting mad and ejected is just frustration. might help him get noticed? idk...i think this game was all about okc hitting all the jumpers at a VERY high rate...which NEVER happens. also lack of energy on our part cause them to have a franchise low 4 turnovers.

at the point when we were down by 25-33 it was gameover and we didnt follow the gameplan anymore...dgaf mode. kobe isos and watching him and not crashing the boards so that final score doesnt really show what happened. if we played our ball with the energy and didnt give up we could have cut it...not less than 10-15 but def could have made a little run....thus giving us something positive into game 2

game 2 will be different and somewhat of a close game. outcome is 50-50 though

Some observations after game 1:

- The bigs didn't seems to play that bad, which makes this loss even more concerning. Gasol could have been more effective, and there were definitely some defensive lapses, but overall, they were engaged and doing what they needed to do out there on both ends - at least in the first half. Once the game got away it all went to hell.

- Wouldn't you think we'd want to run more screen and rolls when Fisher was on the floor? We know why we traded him away - he was getting lit up on defense. I only saw one time where Sessions blew by him and dished if off for an easy dunk. You'd think we would have really taken advantage of that a lot more. It would have gotten the bigs much more involved, and probably would have helped get Sessions going more. Exploit the match ups coach!

- Our help defense needs some big improvement. Their big 3 are living off of screen and rolls. We need to learn how to defend those a LOT better. They were hitting all their jump shots, which you'd have to think they won't always be so accurate, but still. There needs to be more effort in the help defense.

- Will someone tell the person guarding Harden that he wants to go left? Force him right and he'll still try to change direction when he gets in the lane. I saw Hill commit on a screen and roll and he had him going right then backed off and gave him enough room to change to the left and picked up the foul (tough call by the way). Harden is a lot like Odom - make him go right and he's a lot less dangerous.

- Call the screens! Kobe was trying to play Westbrook early in the second half and got hit with a hard pick, while Westbrook went in for an easy basket. Someone behind Kobe fell asleep. Communicate guys.

As bad as the loss was, and as outmatched as the Lakers looked, I still feel they can compete with this team if they clean up their game and not turn it over. But if they don't improve their shooting they're going to get swept. Communicate on defense, start getting Sessions to the hoop and force Westbrook to expend some energy on defense, and play smart to help offset all that speed. I really liked watching Bynum and Gasol sit there on the bench after the game talking about the details, that was awesome. Let's hope that focus actually results in something in game 2.