Philadelphia 76ers at Los Angeles Lakers, March 23, 2022 7:00 p.m.

[euphorbus]

With the closest race for the scoring championship in recent history on the line tonight, how will Coach Vogel and the Lakers slow down Joel Embiid?

[Mamba Mentality]

With the closest race for the scoring championship in recent history on the line tonight, how will Coach Vogel and the Lakers slow down Joel Embiid?

By not playing Lebron, which leads to a blowout and Embiid not playing and scoring as much. Lakers playing 4D chess in order to secure that scoring title.

[ducler]

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[euphorbus]

With LeBron out, the starters are Howard, Gabriel, Johnson, Reaves, Westbrook. The coaches are going for length to match up with Philadelphia. Reaves is not a shooting guard by any means, so ballhandling may be a problem with this lineup. Spacing will be problematic, as well.

[LAKESHOW]

Lebron out. We playin chess

[euphorbus]

Dwight Howard is no longer the Doctor of Dunk.

[euphorbus]

Westbrook with five turnovers in the first half. Give him the keys to the kingdom, and he drops them in the moat.

They are not really slowing down Embiid. He has 16 at the half. Harden, on the other hand, has been stymied, or in some cases has flat-out missed.

[euphorbus]

Although the Lakers' defense has improved, I notice that once they make an initial stop, they have trouble recovering if the other team gets the rebound or makes a good outlet pass. Likewise, their transition defense sometimes goes awry, with one player left open, often on the wing.

[euphorbus]

Good game. Westbrook and the team pushed to the very end.

[TheHartBreakKid]

I don't believe in moral victories but I do believe in silver linings.

- Westbrook got a better chance today without Lebron to continue his longest streak of "good" games this season. And he delivered. He looks more confident than he has all season.
- Lebron will get close to a week's rest and should come out super motivated and fresh on Sunday in a very winnable but also important game
- Dwight had a very good game...I agree that in a healthy team he shouldn't be getting significant minutes unless there are is a matchup that makes sense, but I also think at least until AD comes back he should be in the rotation. Hopefully this will motivate Vogel to do exactly that until AD comes back.
- Most importantly the effort was there and cohesiveness defensively was there for what seems the 4th game in a row. Even though the record is only 2-2 in that time period, I don't think I've seen the team this motivated in any 4 game span this season. Small sample size for sure. and sustaining it is not something I would bet on, But I do appreciate the effort.

Also not super related to this game but still important;

- Seems like AD will be back sooner than later. I think he's someone who feeds off other people's energy. I think competing in games like this, vs laying down and taking the loss , could positively impact what version of AD returns.


Now don't get me wrong. This isn't some optimistic " the record doesn't indicate how good the team is and this team will make noise in the playoffs" type of post. The path of making it to the playoffs and getting out of the first round is very difficult and these small positives aren't making me much more optimistic about that. I'm just saying this game actually makes me feel slightly more optimistic about the highly unlikely chance of this team making playoff noise, despite the loss.

[Mamba Mentality]

Dwight played his ass off, but Embiid was clearly laboring last night and treated the game like a scrimmage. I wouldn't jump to any crazy conclusions.

[Kilroy]

Sixers had low expectations, but this was a good game for our bench chemistry which has finally started to develop... Gabriel and Johnson have been awesome on both ends of the floor... Too bad they can't play together when AD and LeBron get back. I guess they could if we went absolutely huge on teams...