Give Vlad a break...

[TheUrbanZealot]

The guy is shooting 48% from 3 pt range. He's 4th in the NBA in this and has an adjusted FG% of .600!, one of the best in the NBA and the BEST on the lakers (compare him to 48% for Kobe).

He's doing exactly what he is paid to do- space the floor and punish for doubling the post players. He is doing this in only 21 or so mins a game, so it's not like he is out there long enough to justify blaming him for every defensive lapse that takes place.

We have a good blend at 3 of shooting/defense. Ariza is not needed to score- he is needed for this hustle and defense (but he really needs to stop gambling). Until there is some sign of player angst over lack of minutes, don't mess with the system I say.

Some of these ludicrous trade ideas for star SF's are completely unwarranted. Lakers don't need anymore scorers. Lakers just need to take what they have and develop consistency with it...

[donte124]

[semi-sentient]

Radman has been performing just fine (yes, even on defense), so I personally don't see a need to change anything in our starting lineup as others have suggested. There isn't a single player that we could bring in off the bench that is going to replace his shooting, and the only player which would give us a defensive upgrade is Ariza who is thriving coming off the bench right now (and playing more minutes, I might add).

[crazyeights]

Vlad is horrible. I hate him. He's a space cadet.

::Hopes he unjinxed this thread::

[tkb]

Vlad hasn't been that bad, though I don't measure him by his offense so he has a good bit of room for improvement (defensively).

It's Fish and Farmar I won't give a break the way they are playing defensively (and offensively for that matter).

[milesfides]

Totally disagree. Years of Kwame, Smush, Mo Evans, Brian Cook, and Luke Walton as our starters shouldn't lower our expectations right now.

If we're a championship-caliber team, players have to be judged by that standard.

Remember, Bruce Bowen led the league in 3-point shooting a few years ago, and is perennially among the league leaders. He STILL was and is considered an offensive liability.

But it's his defense that earned him a starting spot with a championship contender - and he has been arguably the league's best perimeter defender for the past decade.

Being a great shooter is nice, but that's not enough, because come playoff time, when the pressure cooker is on, you CANNOT RELY on outside shooters, as we've seen last year. What happens when even elite shooters go in a rut for a few days? It could end a team's season.

What you can rely on is commitment to defense, intelligence, effort, and heart, and those aren't things I would consider to be Radman's strengths.

Basically, would I trust him to come through and contribute appropriately in a playoff series against Boston or Detroit?

Hell no.

I don't hate him though, he is shooting very well, but I don't think he should be the starting small forward on a championship team, for the same reasons that I don't think Jason Kapono should be either. And Kapono, while being the best 3-point shooter in the league for the past 5 years, has been a career bench player, for even mediocre teams.

[lakersfanatic]

Yeah, we should give him some slack.. he has been doing better these days. Just need to tweak a little more on D. I like how he switches with Ariza.. one is offensive minded whereas the other is defensive minded. Phil is trying to balance it out considering the minutes they're all sharing.

[Danny Darko]

just keep the defensive shock collar on him and we're fine. He obviously can play passing lane D and zone really well when he's into it. Man is always going to be a bit of an issue for him. But if he's smart about that he'll funnel people to the baseline and let them get blocked by drew like Fish has been doing instead of getting played or allowing open jumpers.

[Slava]

You know, coming into the season if someone was to tell me that Vlad would start playing passing lanes, use his length and not be a liability on a zone defense, I'd have been perfectly fine with it, as long as his offensive game is on. Knowing the kind of terrible defender he was, I wouldn't expect drastic improvements any time soon from him and he's pretty much getting better. His defensive game is on par with Ariza's shooting. He's not shooting lights out either is he but we've definitely seen improvements in terms of confidence.

The biggest issue I have with him is his concentration lapses that ruing the momentum with turnovers. If he can cut that off to a minimum, he's doing fine in the 20 mins he gets to play. The advantage with him is that he can funnel his defender towards 2 shot blockers at the rim, which makes the job much easier and atleast he's contributing much better than Luke Walton right!

[TheUrbanZealot]

Totally disagree. Years of Kwame, Smush, Mo Evans, Brian Cook, and Luke Walton as our starters shouldn't lower our expectations right now.

If we're a championship-caliber team, players have to be judged by that standard.

Remember, Bruce Bowen led the league in 3-point shooting a few years ago, and is perennially among the league leaders. He STILL was and is considered an offensive liability.

But it's his defense that earned him a starting spot with a championship contender - and he has been arguably the league's best perimeter defender for the past decade.

Being a great shooter is nice, but that's not enough, because come playoff time, when the pressure cooker is on, you CANNOT RELY on outside shooters, as we've seen last year. What happens when even elite shooters go in a rut for a few days? It could end a team's season.

What you can rely on is commitment to defense, intelligence, effort, and heart, and those aren't things I would consider to be Radman's strengths.

Basically, would I trust him to come through and contribute appropriately in a playoff series against Boston or Detroit?

Hell no.

I don't hate him though, he is shooting very well, but I don't think he should be the starting small forward on a championship team, for the same reasons that I don't think Jason Kapono should be either. And Kapono, while being the best 3-point shooter in the league for the past 5 years, has been a career bench player, for even mediocre teams.

I think you are forgetting a key point. Radman is not the only SF we have! We have Ariza to compliment him if we need that defensive threat. Please tell me how many other SF's out there can we realistically attain that can satisfy your SF appetite? I mean really, I think it's just getting to the point of ridiculous unrealism. Let's name a few out there-

Shawn Marion
Tayshaun Prince
Gerald Wallace
James Posey

Those are probably the 4 that immediately come to mind that Lakers fans like yourself would love to obtain. You have to ask yourself- 1, is it worth giving up another key component(s) to obtain one of them? 2, is Ariza that much of a drop off in lieu of keeping that key component?

If you ask me, I'll take the Lakers chemistry, the addition of Bynum and a healthy Ariza, the deadly shooting of Radmanovic over having a bonafide 35min + 3. There is more balance now.

Remember the Bulls? There were times when people like Will Perdue, Jud Buechler, Steve Kerr, Dickey Simpkins, Stacey King, etc etc etc started. By all accounts there were much better alternatives, but they had a role. Steve Kerr would get killed defensively, but he made up for it with his clutch shooting. Same goes for many of their role players. The reality is that you don't need to have the most talent, you need to have the best mesh of talent. Lakers have a good chemistry right now. For God's sake, their 18-2! Before we shout mutiny, why don't we see how this plays out a little longer?

The Lakers could be 20-0 and people like you would still want to make trades. Ridiculous...

[semi-sentient]

Eventually people around here need to face reality.

We aren't going to be able to get a defensive-minded "championship-caliber" SF by trading either Radman or Walton (or both), so I think the point stands that right now we don't have any better options. Of course, we could have had Posey which would have addressed some of our concerns, but hey, resigning Vujacic was apparently the priority so we have to work with what we are now stuck with.

What I will say is that come playoff time when the game is tight down the stretch we'd be better suited having Ariza in the game instead of Radman (which is pretty much what Phil does anyway), but as of right now, I think the starting lineup needs to stay the way it is. Additionally, people are being way too hard on Radman. His defense has been average at worst this season, which is something you most certainly can not say about guys like Fisher, Farmar, and Sasha who have been playing below average defense (and offense for that matter). If we want to get better defensively, then we should be looking at those guys first and foremost.

[LLcoleJ]

OP, just admit it. You are the biggest Vlad Homer in the history of Vlad Rad?

[milesfides]

What the...

Vlad hasn't been a good defender at all. I'm not sure what you guys are seeing. The last couple years was ridiculous, Vlad was playing "i don't give a crap about this" defense. He's better this year, but he still is terrible getting around picks, rotating, covering, help defense, etc. He's trying now, which would matter if we were in third grade.

Get him a cookie and a star, then sit him back down.

Did I hear that he's been playing better defense than Vujacic? Vujacic has always been an aggressive, in-your-face pressure defender, and he works his ass off. They're the polar opposites.

And Semi-sentient, there's always opportunities for a trade. Do you believe Radamn is a great three-point shooter who has played average defense at worst? He sounds like a player many teams could use, if other teams share that sentiment.

And to say the starting lineup is fine the way it is? That we can just insert Ariza in the playoffs? That's a pretty big risk in terms of chemistry isn't it? Shouldn't the rotations be figured out earlier?

At worst, without making any trades, we should start Ariza soon, even if it does weaken the bench. We're not going to win championships because of our bench, we're going to win because our SF wouldn't hand Paul Pierce the FInals MVP.

If you go through great teams, there's hardly a weak position.

Also, who was the guy who said Steve Kerr started? The guy never started for the Bulls, and he was perhaps the greatest three-point shooter of all time, something that Radamn is not.

Kerr was a three-point specialist off the bench, which is what Radamn should be, and for that matter, what Fisher should be.

The truth is, Radamn is not a championship caliber defender, he's not a championship caliber passer, not a championship caliber rebounder, not a championship caliber finisher, not a championship caliber anything except perhaps shooting, and even that, he has to prove he can be relied upon.

He's just not talented or skilled enough to be in a championship caliber starter. Period. The reason why the Lakers didn't win more championships with Shaq and Kobe were because of the inadequacies of the role players - they were a two-horse team, and they were vulnerable when their role players couldn't pull their weight.

Detroit was the perfect storm of championship caliber players, they had a top 5 player in each position.

The Spurs always had two weaknesses: health and that other big man since David Robinson retired.

Boston was underrated last year, and I maintained that they had potentially one of the greatest teams ever. Their role players were huge, guys like Perkins proved to be a championship caliber center, defender, rebounder, shot-blocker. Rondo proved to be an underrated passer/ballhandler and a great defender. These are role players who do have their weaknesses but overcame that because they had other elite skills that allowed them to contribute.

Same with Ben Wallace, who despite his inability to shoot the ball, did everything else magnificently well to help the Pistons become such a force.

The common denominator is defense. I don't care if Radamn is playing better defense. He's not playing championship caliber defense.

And we have plenty of assets to obtain such a player. We might start with Ariza though, because the answer might already be on our team. We should at least try.

Same with Vujacic over Fisher, we should at least try to see how it works, but that's the subject of another thread.

[Squirrel Boy]

Werd homie.

[TheUrbanZealot]

OP, just admit it. You are the biggest Vlad Homer in the history of Vlad Rad?

Not at all. I think he can be one of more dunce-y players on the team. But when you have a guy shooting 48% from 3 playing only 20 mins a game, yet virtually every single thread regarding Lakers defensive liability goes back to him, it gets a little overkill-ish.

Plus, I'm not a fan of interrupting chemistry. If you asked Lakers fans before the season would they be satisfied with an 18-2 start, how many of them would say no? Probably no one. Now that we have gotten off to that start though, the perfectionist hounds have come out and nitpicked - biased and often inaccurately mind you...

[Gus McCrae]

Jeez, all you Vlad haters need to stop hating. gawd. give the guy a break. his defense is MUCH better than last year, as everyone mentioned, his offensive efficiency is throught the roof and yet we're still unhappy with him? Lakers are 17-2 and yet we've got a major problem? c'mon...

by the way, as long as we're lobbying for Ariza to start, you should just go back and start Odom. But there's a reason Odom comes off the bench, does anyone remember why? I do...it's to SPREAD THE FLOOR with Radman who has done exactly that. Does anyone notice that Gasol always has bigger numbers in the first half? that's partially because Fisher and Radman are spreading the floor. Something that Ariza does not do.

Yes Ariza has hit some threes this year, but he's not like a vlad a great shooter who's playing the passing lanes and has a chip on his shoulder. And anyways, you all know Phil, if Vlad plays like garbage he's immediately pulled out of the game.

[TheUrbanZealot]

in response to milesfides:

What the...

Vlad hasn't been a good defender at all. I'm not sure what you guys are seeing.

Dude, I think people are seeing him through clear colored glasses rather than grey ones like your own. I don't think anyone is thinking he's a lock down defender. He hasn't been nearly the futile defender people like yourselves paint him to be. If I'm not mistaken, the last lost we had- Ariza was the one who was in the game the 4th quarter. Are you going to blame Radman for that too?

And Semi-sentient, there's always opportunities for a trade. Do you believe Radamn is a great three-point shooter who has played average defense at worst? He sounds like a player many teams could use, if other teams share that sentiment.

Please share a realistic trade scenario that wouldn't disrupt the chemistry, omniscient one...

And to say the starting lineup is fine the way it is? That we can just insert Ariza in the playoffs? That's a pretty big risk in terms of chemistry isn't it? Shouldn't the rotations be figured out earlier?

Now you are starting to make no sense. Lest we forget, yet again- we are 18 and m'fin 2! We are on pace to win 72 games. We are off to the best start in Lakers history. You are talking about risking chemistry, so why do anything when your team is playing so well? Let me guess- it's not a "solid" 18-2 is it?

At worst, without making any trades, we should start Ariza soon, even if it does weaken the bench. We're not going to win championships because of our bench, we're going to win because our SF wouldn't hand Paul Pierce the FInals MVP.

This is getting to the point of absolute lunacy. Paul Pierce, if you don't remember, blew by EVERYONE. That means Kobe, Lamar, Radman, EVERYONE. Hell, Radman only played 20 or so mins a game, so unless you are saying that Pierce just torched Radman for 20 straight mins and then was slowed up by everyone else, I don't see what you are getting at. I think this is where a lot of people went even more sour on Radman - unfairly. He was never going to be able to shut down Pierce. The only reason that Radman got most of the blame is because he's the one that started the game on him. This is where Bynum and Ariza SHOULD help make a difference - but you have to remember- great players are going to overcome even good defense most of the time...

Also, who was the guy who said Steve Kerr started? The guy never started for the Bulls, and he was perhaps the greatest three-point shooter of all time, something that Radamn is not.

Steve Kerr DID start at one point, before Ron Harper. Even if he didn't, he played a lot of minutes, and the point is that his defense was compensated by his shooting. Vlad has shot over 40% for the lakers the last 2 years as a 6 10 SF/PF! He spaces the floor completely different than someone like a Kerr would so you can't even compare

The truth is, Radamn is not a championship caliber defender, he's not a championship caliber passer, not a championship caliber rebounder, not a championship caliber finisher, not a championship caliber anything except perhaps shooting, and even that, he has to prove he can be relied upon.

Right, and Will Perdue wasn't a championship caliber starting center. Your focusing strictly on the players' shortcomings, and nothing about what he does that helps the team (spaces the floor, doesn't complain about mins now, clutch shooter, can play 3 positions - C against teams like GS). The truth is, even if the Lakers won a championship last year, you would still think he wasn't "championship caliber", so that moniker shouldn't even be used...

Dude, you have to relax a little bit and be happy that you have a team you can root for that has a great opportunity to win a championship. We have Bynum and a healthy a Ariza, and Gasol for the entire year, so we should be improved over last year. Had we had Bynum's interior D in last years finals, I doubt people like Rondo and Pierce would have had it so easy getting into the lane.

You are focused on having a "top 5 player at every position", yet you fail to understand the concept of balance and chemistry. If our team was in complete disarray, I could understand the need for some changes. This team is far from disarray, and as long as everyone is playing their role, I see no reason why we can't keep rolling...

[dockingsched]

ariza's jumpshot is back to awful.


and about vlad, his defense has improved. i give him credit for that. he seems a lot more focused. he's been able to force his man to the help and anticipate the pass for a steal more in the first 20 games than i remember him doing for an entire season.

[Sedale Threatt]

Plus, I'm not a fan of interrupting chemistry. If you asked Lakers fans before the season would they be satisfied with an 18-2 start, how many of them would say no? Probably no one. Now that we have gotten off to that start though, the perfectionist hounds have come out and nitpicked - biased and often inaccurately mind you...

Why do you keep harping on our record as if it's some sort of indication that we're unbeatable, or perfect, or that we don't have numerous weaknesses that we should try to improve upon?

All 18-2 does is underscore what we already knew -- that this is an exceptionally talented team. I'm very pleased we've gotten off to a good start. But satisfied? Far from it. That's the exact opposite of what our attitude should be. Because our regular-season record means absolutely nothing at this point, and it will mean even less come playoff time.

I would hardly call anybody perfectionists for noticing that, just like last year, our defense appears to be inconsistent at best, crappy at worst. Or that we have some potentially crushing flaws in our starting lineup, namely at PG and SF. (I am not fooled in the slightest by Radmanovic's hot start. He is what he is at this point, a streak shooter who doesn't contribute in any other facet, and he'll be back down to earth at some point.)

So I'll ask again what I asked in your other thread -- why should we get lulled into a false sense of security, even as Boston and Cleveland race out to starts that are every bit as good as ours, when we can maximize our chances of winning the title by taking a hard look at each and every one of our flaws, and try to fix as many as we can?

[TheUrbanZealot]

Why do you keep harping on our record as if it's some sort of indication that we're unbeatable, or perfect? All it does is underscore what we already knew -- that this is a very talented team. I'm pleased we've gotten off to a good start. But satisfied? Far from it. Our regular-season record means absolutely nothing at this point, and it will mean even less come playoff time.

I would hardly call anybody perfectionists for noticing that, just like last year, our defense appears to be inconsistent at best, crappy at worst. Or that we have some potentially crushing flaws in our starting lineup, namely at PG and SF.

So I'll ask again what I asked in your other thread -- why should we get lulled into a false sense of security, even as Boston and Cleveland race out to starts that are every bit as good as ours, when we can maximize our chances by taking a hard look at each and every one of our flaws?

Again, you are failing to remember that we have someone else at SF!!! If we need someone to come in and defend, bam- we have Ariza. Does Ariza have to start in order to quell your fear? My goodness.

Even if we forget that Radman and Fisher are both in the top 10 in NBA 3 pt percentage, you have Ariza and a scrappy Vujacic to help with defense.

I still haven't seen any realistic, viable alternatives? Just what exactly are you suggesting the Lakers do?