GT: Heat @ Lakers. Thu/17/1/2013 10:30 PM ET

[Kilroy]

I blame D'Antoni

I wish I could still do that... But you can see by his rotations/substitutions, he's trying... And guys are trying a little more too... And we're better...
But we just have a long way to go to win against elite teams. It's not D'Antoni, and it's not just Pau, and I'm not sure trading Pau alone would turn this around. Miami showed us flaws we didn't know we had.

[DrewBynum77]

I think this loss is on D'Antoni having to leave Gasol in. That got us scrambling on defense down the stretch and get those looks on the cut rather than the outside shot. That could have been a win.

pringles made a lot of mistakes, our players played well bellow their potential, they turned the ball over a **** load of times and still it was a close game...

[GeneralNash]

That shot by ray allen was pretty ridiculous over dwight. Lakers had their chance...but Kobe needed to be efficient in this one.

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[Father Time]

I blame eablinksum for not making the GT.

[The Laker Kid]

at least it wasnt a beatdown. I'm proud of our guys tonight.

[Father Time]

That shot by ray allen was pretty ridiculous over dwight. Lakers had their chance...but Kobe needed to be efficient in this one.

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Yep. I said early in the thread if Kobe shoots > 45% we win.

[krikor]

leclutch

enjoy it

[hazy_01]

Moral victory as others said, we stayed competitive even after so many turnovers.

[Mamba Mentality]

When a team is pressing like that, you need quick passes, not dribbling. Some triangle sets might have helped that... But you also need shooters...

I just feel like this one was closer that it really was... I felt like Miami was a beat slow tonight, but when it counted, they had another gear...

We don't.

agree with this a lot. when a team presses you that hard on the perimeter you need to swing the ball and find the open man quickly. the heat applied pressure when it counted and we didnt respond at all.

And just to add to that our big men need to be able to roll quicker as well. Miami's bigs have the luxury of doubling hard because someone like Pau isn't going to get anywhere by the time our point makes a pass. All in all Miami is really discipline defensively. Wade and Lebron are phenomenal individual defenders with incredible range. Hard to make long passes when both of them are on the floor.

[kblo247]

Is anyone arguing that Nash iced Kobe that fourth when he had it going? He literally dribbled for 17 seconds at one point and Kobe had to run out to him and force something. Same thing happened every trip down the closing minutes, he literally dribbled out the clock and couldn't break the pressure and had to be bailed out or was trapped. The one time he wasn't he fell on his ass. There's no excuse to say him entering the game didnt kill our offensive and defensive rhythm. The same sets Duhon got into with Kobe, MWP, Pau, and Dwight are the same ones he literally forced into having 8 seconds or less to work with. And he got lost for a layup and a jumper in a tie game. He was bad, Pau has gotten benched for less as has Jamison, he should've been benched because Duhon was better that fourth quarter.

Hell if Nash was going to be out there he shouldn't have had the ball and just spotted up ala fish as that's the only useful sequence he had the fourth quarter, which was Kobe bringing the ball up, posting in an iso, and feeding him an open 3. Nash killed us when we could have who because he couldn't be pressure or traps.

Could Kobe have shot better the first 3 quarters? Yes.
Could Pau have not given the layup line the 3rd quarter? Yes
Could Dwight have hit fts? Yes

But the game was winnable. The Lakers actually had the game until Nash broke their entire rhythm both sides the ball in the fourth. His over dribbling and lack of D hurt us. The guy literally froze Kobe out in the fourths final minutes by dribbling 12-17 seconds in a spot, he literally rendered Dwight useless too as he couldn't make a post entry pass, as Metta bailed him out by coming to the ball and hitting Dwight. And his D well there was none. He should have been benched if Pau was for the same ****. He hurt the team tonight, plain and simple because there was no rhythm out there with him, that even Kobe or Metta were setting that quarter.

Nash has to close better period

[NoseBleedLakers]

Ouch. Lakers had their chances, and gave them away in the form of 20 turnovers. Shot themselves in the foot more than Miami beating them, other than the final 2-3 minutes of the game.

Lakers tasted that 10th seed for a couple of hours though

[Rox_Nix_Nox]

bad execution by a team that really doesn't have a clue what to execute

[Wonderllama]

The future is in good hands

[Kilroy]

If this was a benchmark game looks like we failed. =/

I honestly think this was a benchmark game for us... I think it's the pivot-point for our post season hopes, and it was a perfect opportunity to take down the champs on the second night of a B2B... Which would have worked wonders on our chemistry and on the respect we had among teams we're going to face from here on out. I think it would have lifted a lot of the pressure off this season...
And I don't think we were prepared, I don't think we had a clear plan, and I think we executed pretty poorly.

At a time when we needed to tighten it up and build some momentum, we had a letdown from some of our stars and blew a golden opportunity.

We can still make the playoffs and maybe even contend, but we made the road a lot tougher tonight.

[Peregrine01]

The group of Duhon, Kobe, MWP, Pau, and Deight had a positive rhythm and that went to hell the second Nash entered and started dribbling in one spot and stalling the O, then getting lost on D. That's on Mike.

What are you whining about? Did you even watch the game? Soon as Nash was about to enter the game in the 4th following a Lakers timeout, Spo put up a press specifically designed to get the ball OUT of Nash's hands. They knew that the Lakers designed a play to get the ball to Nash during the time out so Miami shaded the in-bounder to get it to Metta instead. End result, Lakers burned a lot of clock trying to get the ball to Nash and couldn't get into their set effectively. D'Antoni should've definitely called a time-out when he saw that.

Re: defense. He wasn't getting lost on D, he was getting screened twice by Miami bigs on two possessions. Ray hit one lay-up on a pretty bad rotation from the other Lakers and then he hit a tough fade-away jumper over Howard on the other one. How can you expect any one player to be able to fight through multiple screens and defend it effectively with poor help? Fact is: Lakers' team defense still leaves much to be desired. Did you see how aggressively Miami is on their rotations? It's completely night and day.

Watch the game instead of jumping to conclusions.

[DEEP3CL]

Honestly I'd rather get ran out of the building than lose by 5-6 points.

No...no..no, you learn more in close games than getting waxed. At least we can pin point the reasons this game. Early it was TO's then later it was defense and spotty offensive execution. I can live with knowing those are the area of correction. Blow out prove nothing but a litany of problems and you don't know what to examine first.

[TyCobb]

My Heat fan friends are letting me hear it.

[TheFix]

Kobe still think he can take Lebron one-on-one?

[NoseBleedLakers]

How 'bout that dunk by LBJ though with about 5 seconds left in the game and the shot clock off.

[Doormatt]

lol @ all the wannabe trolls coming into this thread now.

good stuff.