GAME #12 11/23/08 Los Angeles Laker Vs. Sacramento Kings

[lakersfanatic]

It was a dumb move for them to trade artest for basically nothing... why are teams doing this to themselves.. The KG trade.. Artest... i mean they could clearly have gotten someone better in return. Lakers were evening dangling good players for trade. But on a serious note, im glad lakers kept the core and stuck with them.

We're actually finishing games very well. Before i would be like.. ok they're leading my 15-20pts and think they'll probably catch right back up again but these pass games is changing my mind

Good game Good game
Go Lakers!

[hermes]

there is some conern about our defensize focus at times, or lack there of

that said the kings aren't very good and its a win, i'll take it

[Erik Eleven]

Horrible looking win. Our defense was pathetic. Why does our defense look different on different nights? Are different assistant coaches running the defense on different nights? What's going on? Let Rambis handle it for the rest of the season, or whoever it is that was in charge of it in the first two games.

I'll take the win, though.

[LLcoleJ]

Their defense is leaking, and the Kings found plenty of holes to exploit, their 53.4% shooting a sign of how poor the Lakers were on defense.

"I'm not happy with this win," Kobe Bryant said. "I felt like we didn't particularly get better tonight. We could have played much more solid defensively."

The Lakers did that in building a 19-point lead at the start of the fourth quarter.

Then they stopped playing defense and the Kings made them play, closing to within four points midway through the fourth

This is the kind of stuff we need to hear from our leader, after such a pathetic defensive outing.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/basketbal ... 6385.story

[semi-sentient]

Agreed, and I think it's about time he spoke up as we are reverting back to last seasons squad.

We started the season locking down everyone and their momma, but in 4 of the last 5 games we've either allowed teams to shoot good percentages or out-rebound us (combinations of which have led to teams scoring a ton of points on us). Whatever the case, we are certainly not playing the same level defense that we started the season with and that's a problem.

[Sedale Threatt]

Not to blame any one specific player for it, but I think we have enough guys in the rotation that simply don't have a defensive mentality (Farmar, Radmanovic, Vujacic). Plus, there are guys like Fish and Gasol and Bynum who do well in some areas, but can be exploited in others -- attacking Fish with PnRs, overpowering Gasol, bringing Bynum away from the basket.

As such, it's going to have be hammered home each and every day by the coaching staff. That's what you do in training camp, practicing day after day after day, and that's why we got off to such a good start. Now that the season has started, and practice time is limited, a lot of the fundamentals we were stressing have probably lapsed.

For example, I don't see us being nearly as aggressive in terms of trapping and overloading the ball-side of the court as we were at the start. When we do, we scramble the game, and force turnovers, and force teams to play faster than they want to. When we don't, we're simply not good enough to stop people with basic man-to-man defense, a la San Antonio.

It takes time to create habits with a new system, and we obviously haven't had enough. Phil needs to crack the whip and stay on top of this, or we can forget about beating the Celtics right now. That was the secret to their success -- they had an assistant whose sole responsibility was implementing and monitoring their defense. We need to make a similar effort, if not through a specialist than the collective effort of our staff.

[Slava]

I think it'd be safe to say that Radmanovic has shown a better defensive mentality than Farmar and Sasha so far this season. He's at least using his size, rotating and grabbing boards on a consistent basis. The way our guards defended yesterday was absolutely horrible.