What Exactly Is The Issue?

[leeprettyp]

So whats the official word on Dwight tonight?

[LewisnotMiller]

Defending Kobe is not something I make a habit of doing but...

I actually think he's handled the situation this year in a pretty mature fashion. His criticism has generally been of the team as a whole, and he hasn't separated himself from those comments. He has kept his own play at a very high level, and he seems to be making the right assumptions in terms of re-adjusting on the offensive end to playing off the ball a little more. And he's doing a decent job of it, with an increased FG%.

Far from perfect (his perimeter D looks a shadow of what it was to me) but the dude is NOT young any more. One thing I've learned watching the C's get horribly old (both this time and at the end of the original Big 3) is that older good players still play some awesome ball, but it becomes more sporadic, and to some extent they have to pick their moments. Kobe looks a bit less likely to run through screens defensively, and really get in someone's face, and at times that has become way too passive, but overall he is still playing at a very high level the majority of the time.

And whilst he has been critical of things in the media a little, it has not crossed into trying to separate himself from the team, in my opinion. He wants things to change...good call.

[The Laker Kid]

What's exactly the issue?? It's Dish Network's fault that's the issue. I'm willing to bet that if they show the Lakers to everyone, all these mess will be fixed.

[DonJay21]

What you guys think is the worst miskate made by the lakers this year?

[Draginho]

not playing any kind of D.

[LA_Sports]

The answer by this point is painfully obvious... Defense... It is the only chance they got. It would also help if there was someone else that could create a shot from the perimeter.

[richboy]

Dwight is not a liability on this team at either end, far from it. But he is not the same player we thought we were getting, when everyone was thinking this was a 'championship or bust' type roster. More so on the defensive end than the offensive end. What we have now is someone who is roughly on par with a healthly Andrew Bynum (and look at how that went last year.)

In his prime in Orlando, he seemed to cover a 10-12 foot circle inside all by himself. With his length, quickness, and power he covered the paint with relative ease- turn back opposing players, make them change their shots, etc. I think a big difference now is that in order for him to help on D he now needs to commit before the opposing player commits/picks up their dribble, which can lead to defensive breakdowns (i.e. Dwight and Paul looking at each other after the other team dunks.) Before, he could just hang back like a goalie, see what the other team was going to do, then snuff it out like the DPOY he is. He was a game changer at that end of the floor, right now he is not.

On the offensive end, he has less power and quickness and that is resulting in more strips. But it's not so bad IMO.

I don't think he's hurt, but he is still obviously recovering physically from the surgery and I think he actually needs to continue playing himself into better shape, rather than needing rest.

Think your making it too complicated. The Lakers can't defend anybody off the dribble. They have a coach that defense is an afterthought. SVG was a great defensive mind in Orlando. Even though they weren't great on the perimeter defensively they had guys like Pietrus, Richardson, Lee, Qrich, Barnes, etc over the years to provide some resistance. Add in they slowed the game down so they weren't getting killed in fast break points.

The Lakers perimeter defense is horrible. Kobe is just a bad defender now. PGs just got to a spot and shoot over Nash. Artest isn't slowing down elite scorers anymore. The guys that come off the bench are maybe even worse on defense. The Lakers should be playing a slow it down go inside to the bigs and keep teams out of transition type of offense. What they do on offense hurts what they are doing on defense because they lack the athletes to play such a fast game.

[Rox_Nix_Nox]

personal, three spots on the bench going to waste

[EnigmaticProblem]

What you guys think is the worst miskate made by the lakers this year?

Our bench has deteriorated every single year since we won our last championship. The last year we won, we had Farmar, Brown, Vujacic and Odom coming off the bench, none of whom was a one-dimensional player. We got rid of Farmar, who provided energy and penetration off the bench-- That's something we haven't had since. We lost a lot of younger frountcourt players, too-- Another boost of energy. We got Matt Barnes, which I thought was amazing, but he was always injured during our time here. Now, his usage is up, his minutes are up, and his turnovers are down.

Like I said, this team's bench play has consistently deteriorated, and we have absolutely no one off of our bench who is capable of penetrating. In fact, we have no one outside of Nash and Bryant who can do such. Mitch sort of called it quits after the Dwight trade, when he should've tried picking up quality pieces who can relieve the starters. It's hard to fault Mitch, since he actually pulled off the Dwight trade-- People are complaining about Dwight now, but I can't wait to see them proved wrong.

Another massive mistake was trying to rectify the Mike Brown Experiment by initiating the Mike D'Antoni Experiment. D'Antoni still might figure it out, and I really respect his ball IQ , but as of right now, it's a massive mistake.

The answer by this point is painfully obvious... Defense... It is the only chance they got. It would also help if there was someone else that could create a shot from the perimeter.

I think we're the only team in the league that has a small forward with the handles of a four year old child.

[minifang]

Personnel:

1) No fast and athletic players (leading to defensive issues)
2) No one who can drive efficiently
3) Huge hole at SF
4) Horrible bench

[EnigmaticProblem]

Personnel:

1) No fast and athletic players (leading to defensive issues)
2) No one who can drive efficiently
3) Huge hole at SF
4) Horrible bench

1. Check out the Mavericks 2011 roster and name me their "fast and athletic players". Thanks.
2. Kobe Bryant can drive pretty efficiently. Actually, this is the best he has done it in about 5 years.
3. World Peace is fine. . . There's not a single player he can't guard aside from LeBron and Durant. Name me a few guys that can guard those two, though. It's his role on the offensive end that needs some definition. Phil severely limited his role, remember.
4. This is correct.

[tenten]

Other than Dwight's bball IQ, I think the pace is way too fast for this team.

[EnigmaticProblem]

The pace is definitely way too fast. They drastically need to cut down on three-pointers. We're third in 3PFGA with 25; in contrast, the Warriors average 20 3PFGA, and they have MUCH better shooters than us. 30% of our shots come from behind the arc; that number is 24% for the Warriors. Now, we all know long jumpers lead to long rebounds-- Is it surprising that we give up 42.7 points in the paint? Our opponents, on average, score approximately 42% of their points in the paint. Moreover, we give up 15.9 fastbreak points, which is the second most in the league. Our opponents' fastbreak efficiency is 1.93. Of course, those fastbreak statistics have a fair bit to do with turnovers, but those long rebounds only add to that problem. We're shooting far too many threes.

Another major problem is the offensive freedom-- Far too many players have complete offensive freedom. Basketball doesn't work that way. You have to accentuate your strengths and dull your weaknesses as a team. Not everyone on this team is a scorer, so not everyone should have offensive freedom. For example, Nash's FGAs and FTAs are down from last year, which would be fine if Jodie Meeks wasn't averaging the same amount of FGAs and FTAs as Nash. Metta gets more FGAs than Dwight. These guys need their roles defined. Phil never wanted Metta to receive the ball, and publicly expressed his decision-making skills, and offensive abilities. Mike D'Antoni talks about Metta as if he's Carmelo Anthony.

And Pau's done. I will never be able to forget that loose ball/long rebound near the three-point line that Pau simply stared at-- He probably could grabbed it if he put his arms out, but he was waiting for anyone else to do it. No Country For Old Men. . .

[ennui]

The pace is definitely way too fast. They drastically need to cut down on three-pointers. We're third in 3PFGA with 25; in contrast, the Warriors average 20 3PFGA, and they have MUCH better shooters than us. 30% of our shots come from behind the arc; that number is 24% for the Warriors. Now, we all know long jumpers lead to long rebounds-- Is it surprising that we give up 42.7 points in the paint? Our opponents, on average, score approximately 42% of their points in the paint. Moreover, we give up 15.9 fastbreak points, which is the second most in the league. Our opponents' fastbreak efficiency is 1.93. Of course, those fastbreak statistics have a fair bit to do with turnovers, but those long rebounds only add to that problem. We're shooting far too many threes.

Another major problem is the offensive freedom-- Far too many players have complete offensive freedom. Basketball doesn't work that way. You have to accentuate your strengths and dull your weaknesses as a team. Not everyone on this team is a scorer, so not everyone should have offensive freedom. For example, Nash's FGAs and FTAs are down from last year, which would be fine if Jodie Meeks wasn't averaging the same amount of FGAs and FTAs as Nash. Metta gets more FGAs than Dwight. These guys need their roles defined. Phil never wanted Metta to receive the ball, and publicly expressed his decision-making skills, and offensive abilities. Mike D'Antoni talks about Metta as if he's Carmelo Anthony.

And Pau's done. I will never be able to forget that loose ball/long rebound near the three-point line that Pau simply stared at-- He probably could grabbed it if he put his arms out, but he was waiting for anyone else to do it. No Country For Old Men. . .

Totally agree.

[Kilroy]

To be fair, it looks to me like D'Antoni has been adjusting his system and flow to what these players can do to a point... The pace is a little slower since Nash came back and he seems to be trying to control the pace...

But without playing pretty much any kind of D for large parts of the game, there isn't a whole lot Nash can do.
If you let NBA caliber players get hot, they generally will stay hot, which just makes it harder to turn up the D in the 4th.

So yeah, any team with Kobe and Dwight as their best players, should be slowing teams down and grinding them to dust in the half court sets.

The problem is, we can't slow anyone down, even if D-Town wanted us too...

[Soulsphere]

The issues are simple.

THEY HIRED THE WRONG COACH FOR THE JOB!

This isn't an issue if he is a good coach or not. He's simply not the right guy for the Lakers.

The successful person knows that they need to stick to their strength and shooting 3s isn't their strong suit. -Kobe and Metta are shooting around 35%-36% which is pretty average
-they don't have a stretch 4 which isn't Pau's fault. He's a great player who is being forced to do something he's not good at

When you take a lot of long shots, and miss....you give up a lot of fast breaks to the other team.

Combine that with the Lakers' poor turnover numbers. You will give a lot of easy baskets to the other teams. As much as you want players to have the ability to dribble the ball, sometimes you just need people who will catch the ball and either pass right away or shoot right away. Maybe even a fake and take one dribble and pop. Metta over dribbles and turns it over a lot. Kobe will be Kobe which is fine. He does turn it over a little but I can live with some of his turnovers. Dwight brings the ball down way too much to get it stripped. Dwight tend to bring the ball low to gather for more powerful slams.

Because of all the fast breaks the lakers give up through turnovers and long missed shots....they can't seem to contain any team under a 100pts per game.

D'antoni's system also requires the Lakers to run alot and if they are running a lot on offense and having to run back cause of the transitions they give up...that is a lot of running for a very old team. There is a reason why the Spurs seems to defy father time. They basically slow down the offense and play a lot of half court.

Simply put, D'antoni is a good coach (either though I never like his style) but he simply was the wrong person to hire.

[frugal]

After last night's disappointing home lose to the Denver Nuggets, the Los Angeles Lakers dropped to 11th place in the Western Conference and a whopping 11 games back from the 1st place Los Angeles Clippers.

It's starting to becoming obvious that one of the main reasons for the Lakers' slide has to do with Kobe Bryant and the fact that his mentor is no longer on the roster.

Since Bryant and Derek Fisher both entered the league as rookies in the 1996-97 season, they've enjoyed much success, winning 5 championships and going to the Finals 7 times. However, things haven't been so easy for Bryant without his mentor on the roster.

Regular Season Record (w/o Derek Fisher):

150-152 .497

Playoffs Record (w/o Derek Fisher):

9-15 .375

As the record shows, without his mentor there, Bryant is a sub .500 regular season leader and even worse in the post season.

A quick fix would be for the team to sign Derek Fisher when he is available to help right the ship in Los Angeles. That way, Bryant will get his mojo back and the team will finally have someone capable of leading them on the court.

[Kilroy]

Simmer down Derek

[TheKiteDesigner]

Kobe and his mentor got swept in 2011 by the Mavericks. Guess again about that slide Derek.

[Doormatt]

nice try fisher.