RealGM

Are you happy with his game? Seems like something is missing.I can't put my finger on what it is! Do we resign him or look in another direction (not that there's much out there)?

He played great when he was allowed to run and dish... The rest of our team just isn't set up for that...

So when asked to set up a slow-down half-court offense, he's reduced to a spectator most of the time.

His defense hasn't been bad... The guys that were absolutely torching Fish, aren't doing that as much anymore... But he hasn't been a superstar Defensive force either...

We're in the playoffs, we're a slow team, and we're playing teams with more athletic perimeter players at this point. He's facing some tough matchups.

We resign him. And see if we can't get another complimentary guard as well.

The problem is Brown won't let him do anything meaningful with the ball

He's expected to bring the ball down to the 3 line and play hot potato with it until it gets to the post. Then he's expected to wait.

He's also expected to be a 3 point specialist just like Blake, Barnes, and MWP even though all of them are unreliable from range. Meanwhile the actual 3 point specialist Murphy is glued to the bench

flowflow99 wrote:The problem is Brown won't let him do anything meaningful with the ball

He's expected to bring the ball down to the 3 line and play hot potato with it until it gets to the post. Then he's expected to wait.

He's also expected to be a 3 point specialist just like Blake, Barnes, and MWP even though all of them are unreliable from range. Meanwhile the actual 3 point specialist Murphy is glued to the bench

Brown deserves some of the blame, but so does our talent. Kobe isn't a spot-up shooter. So Sessions can't dribble and dish to him for the shot... Kobe also likes to initiate the offense a lot of the time and Sessions has to hit him first.
And we have no other spot up shooters.

Not a great setup for a penetrating guard...

That said. I haven't been too impressed with his inlet passes lately.

Sessions and Barnes play well together, the Lakers don't wanna get into a running match with KD and Westbrook but that's where Sessions thrives. Brown should start Blake who is a better half court PG, and bring Sessions off the bench with the energy guys like Barnes and Hill. For a majority of his time in the game he'll be defended by Fish who will not be able to stay in front of him. I say start Blake, bring Sessions off the pine, Barnes in for MWP, then bring MWP (or Ebanks if you wanna save MWP's energy for when KD is in) back in for Kobe. We'd have Sessions, Barnes, MWP, and Hill/Pau/Bynum depending on who the Thunder counter with. Sessions would have the advantage over a slow Fish, and Barnes would hopefully do a decent job on Harden.

you know you have a bad coach when players (Gasol and Bynum) prefers to discuss the game plan on their own. rather than head out to the dugout with their coach and listen to what his going to say.

Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum sat on the Lakers bench to discuss strategy after the final buzzer sounded to announce their 119-90 Game 1 loss to the Thunder.

“We really just talked about what we're going to do offensively as far as trying to get most of us more involved in the high-low (game) because we have a big advantage there and we've got to get to it,” Bynum told TNT.

Read more: http://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/22 ... z1uxJ5A2A1

Kilroy wrote:Brown deserves some of the blame, but so does our talent. Kobe isn't a spot-up shooter. So Sessions can't dribble and dish to him for the shot... Kobe also likes to initiate the offense a lot of the time and Sessions has to hit him first.
And we have no other spot up shooters.

Not a great setup for a penetrating guard...

That said. I haven't been too impressed with his inlet passes lately.

What I'd like to see is some actual pick and roll play. Where Sessions attacks, the big actually rolls and see if they can break down the D and get some good looks that way

flowflow99 wrote:

Kilroy wrote:Brown deserves some of the blame, but so does our talent. Kobe isn't a spot-up shooter. So Sessions can't dribble and dish to him for the shot... Kobe also likes to initiate the offense a lot of the time and Sessions has to hit him first.
And we have no other spot up shooters.

Not a great setup for a penetrating guard...

That said. I haven't been too impressed with his inlet passes lately.

What I'd like to see is some actual pick and roll play. Where Sessions attacks, the big actually rolls and see if they can break down the D and get some good looks that way

I'd like to see that too... It would mean giving Sessions more control of the offense, and one of our bigs being relatively quick and decisive to the hole...

I don't think Bynum could do it especially with how teams are swarming him now, and I'm not sure Pau is agile enough either. Maybe Hill is our best bet.

+1 on session's pick and roll.

Speaking of Sessions, do you guys think that his value around the league has fallen enough that he may reconsider and opt in for his option year, or even better opt out and we end up being able to resign him to a 5 year 20-25 million dollar deal? Or is he still going to cost a lot because other teams have now seen what he is capable of in a PG dominant pick and roll offense?

VIPER8382 wrote:Speaking of Sessions, do you guys think that his value around the league has fallen enough that he may reconsider and opt in for his option year, or even better opt out and we end up being able to resign him to a 5 year 20-25 million dollar deal? Or is he still going to cost a lot because other teams have now seen what he is capable of in a PG dominant pick and roll offense?

5mil?! YHHAHHAHHA
More like 15 mil 5 years. He's like a slightly better Shannon brown at this point.

chefy wrote:you know you have a bad coach when players (Gasol and Bynum) prefers to discuss the game plan on their own. rather than head out to the dugout with their coach and listen to what his going to say.

It's even sadder when our bigs are sitting around discussing what they should do offensively when the problem has been their defense.

I can see Sessions getting 5 mil a year if it's a 2-3 year deal. It's unlikely that he will land a 5 year 25 mil deal, and if a team does offer that I don't see the Lakers matching that.

semi-sentient wrote:

chefy wrote:you know you have a bad coach when players (Gasol and Bynum) prefers to discuss the game plan on their own. rather than head out to the dugout with their coach and listen to what his going to say.

It's even sadder when our bigs are sitting around discussing what they should do offensively when the problem has been their defense.

I checked out the box score for that Lakers vs. Thunder comeback.

In 22 minutes, yes 22 minutes the Thunder scored 29 points. That's staggering. That's incredible defense, flat out suffocating.

You know how L.A. can win this series? By playing Hill-Gasol together.

You know how L.A. can score on OKC? By playing high pick and pop with Hill crashing the boards.

They have the formula... Why not use it...

Jajwanda wrote:

semi-sentient wrote:

chefy wrote:you know you have a bad coach when players (Gasol and Bynum) prefers to discuss the game plan on their own. rather than head out to the dugout with their coach and listen to what his going to say.

It's even sadder when our bigs are sitting around discussing what they should do offensively when the problem has been their defense.

I checked out the box score for that Lakers vs. Thunder comeback.

In 22 minutes, yes 22 minutes the Thunder scored 29 points. That's staggering. That's incredible defense, flat out suffocating.

You know how L.A. can win this series? By playing Hill-Gasol together.

You know how L.A. can score on OKC? By playing high pick and pop with Hill crashing the boards.

They have the formula... Why not use it...

Lets not kid ourselves, we were extremely look to win that game. Reality is that we have been blown out in every game against these guys. When do the blow outs start? 3rd quarter, after the opposing coach has made adjustments and our (Please Use More Appropriate Word) coach has failed to

he's the best point guard we've had since gary payton. of course we resign him.

we have a true winning team, just not the right coach.

Our coaching staff is way denser than I thought if they can't see Blake is getting roasted by whoever he guards. Against teams with good benches we need to keep Blake off of the Andre Miller's and James Harden's. This should be reason enough to move him into the starting lineup, where his liabilities will have less of an impact. I don't even care if it makes our starters less productive, our bench has been getting annihilated all year and if nothing changes it will be our undoing in the playoffs.

semi-sentient wrote:

chefy wrote:you know you have a bad coach when players (Gasol and Bynum) prefers to discuss the game plan on their own. rather than head out to the dugout with their coach and listen to what his going to say.

It's even sadder when our bigs are sitting around discussing what they should do offensively when the problem has been their defense.

IMO our offense was a huge problem yesterday. Also OKC was hitting a ton of perimeter shots, so while I agree our defense was awful, our big man D wasn't the main culprit (as I'm writing this I realize pick and roll involves big men...sigh)......

Oh well, hey maybe we can score and not get blownout!

That forced offense was a major problem. It can lead to fast break opportunities if you don't get the ball into Bynum comfortably and you're just watching Thabo pick Kobe clean.

In order for lakers to have chance in this series, sessions (primarily) and others are gonna have to get some penetration into lane to help move the defense. OKC defense wasn't allowing for easy post entry passes, and because no one was moving ball well or penetrating, the offense bogged down. Kobe had to take multiple 25 footers cuz his knees won't allow to attack as much as he would/ could/ should of done in the past.

Hopefully tmw sessions can do this, lakers can take better care of ball and limit fast break opportunities to keep it close til 4th qtr, where we can try n steal one.