Colbinii wrote:
I fundamentally disagree here. I do not think D'Angelo Russell is capable of helping a team win in the post-season. He is a career 14/3/5 playoff performer on Sub-50 TS% with 0 defense. The past 3 seasons [not counting 2019] he is at 13% Free Throw Rate in the post-season and he has 0 free throws so far in 3 games against Denver. He has drawn 4 Free Throw Attempts (2 fouls) in 7 games against Denver dating back to last post-season.
This is largely small-sample-size theater, in series where his teams have been overmatched. He actually played pretty fine in the two playoff series in his career where his team wasn’t overmatched. I’m not DLo’s biggest fan, but I think arguments that say a player who is a pretty good player in the regular season is actually bad because of playoff performance in a small number of games in series’ where his team was the inferior team is probably not the most convincing argument. The truth is almost certainly somewhere in the middle. And I’d note that, as applied to this series, the Lakers haven’t even been outscored with DLo on the court! If I were trying to build a championship roster, DLo definitely wouldn’t be my first choice (nor would players of his archetype in general), but he’s a solid player (but no better than that).
As for Austin Reaves being a significant player on a Championship Team? I mean, sure, against as a bench player, not a starter. He can't defend and he can't consistently break down a defense.
No, he’s absolutely good enough to be a starter on a title team. No question at all, IMO. Austin Reaves is a very good NBA player! I feel like that should be obvious to anyone.
D-E-F-E-N-S-E.
D'Angelo Russell and Austin Reaves are like Reggie Jackson defensively, except D'Lo and Reaves are both playing 30-35 MPG, in the starting line-up.
You can't win against elite players and elite teams when you have two traffic cones on the court for 30+ Minutes.
Gordon and KCP are all-defensive caliber defender's while MPJ is a very clear positive on that end. Reaves and D'lo are traffic cones on the defensive end.
It’s perhaps worth noting that with DLo and Reaves both on the court, the Lakers are giving up 115.38 points per 100 possessions in this series. Which isn’t bad at all against the Nuggets—it’s both below their regular season efficiency (though we should keep in mind changes in reffing in the playoffs) and below the Nuggets’ overall efficiency in the series. Factually speaking, the Nuggets aren’t actually killing lineups with those two guys.
Colbinii wrote:lessthanjake wrote:Mos_Heat wrote:I guess I just don't understand what parts and what talent are you guys see on this LA roster. Hachimura is like what 50th-60th best forward in the league, Russell is an all time playoff choker and their backup big is Jason Hayes
When we talk about guys who aren’t major stars, I think it’s always going to be very easy to pick guys apart and criticize them as bad (after all, if they didn’t have things to pick at, they’d be major stars!). And people have winners’ bias and losers’ bias, so when a team isn’t doing well, they pick apart the role players, and when the team does well they think about the strengths that made those guys win. For instance, if the shoe were on the other foot, I think one would see a lot of Nuggets fans criticizing MPJ as being a black hole offensively that somehow isn’t a good defender despite his size. That would snowball into criticizing the coach for allowing MPJ to almost never pass the ball, etc. If they were losing, Gordon would probably be being criticized for his lack of shooting ability. Nuggets fans would probably be opining on the fact that the organization let the bench deteriorate compared to last year and has no viable backup big man. Murray would be being criticized for hogging the ball too much and having bad shot selection. Fans of teams that lose often have a favorite player that they don’t want to blame for the loss and so they pick apart the other players on the team or the coach or things about the organization in order to apportion the blame elsewhere. Often those criticisms end up being at least partially valid! After all, if one team is winning, then they very likely do have the better team and there are reasons they are winning. But when you compare rosters using that kind of losers’ bias (and, on the flip side, winners’ bias regarding the other team), then it’s not a great way to dispassionately compare rosters.
The most important part about role players is being able to defend. Gordon, KCP and MPJ have all shown the ability and consistency to defend at high levels in the post-season. Regardless of whether or not their shot is falling, they have value, especially as Gordon can roam around the dunkers spot, but all 3 of these players can play good defense.
That is what a good role player is. The Lakers instead have 4 Point Guards in their line-up and 3 of them are bad defenders.
Here’s the thing though. The Lakers’ deficiency this series has been more on the offensive end than the defensive end. They’re not actually doing an awful job on the Nuggets defensively. The Nuggets are scoring with efficiency that is a decent bit below what they scored in the regular season. Granted, efficiency has gone down a bit in the playoffs so far overall, so that’s probably more like a wash. But the Lakers offensive efficiency is a lot below both what the Lakers did in the regular season and what the Nuggets gave up in the regular season. This actually isn’t a series where the losing team just can’t defend the other team at all. So it’s hard to really put much credence in an argument that basically revolves around portraying the Lakers role players as being a bunch of people that just can’t hold up defensively when that’s actually not really what’s happened.
