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Salmons has been the best player tonight. Good game so far.

The officiating is hilariously one-sided as usual when we play the Lakers.

The officiating in this game is a pure joke. It's nice to see Reke looking like Reke R.O.Y. again. That block on Artest was nice. I need to seed more of this effort from Reke, we need it!!!

We're winning and Cousins has like...4 points? Wow.

xx_skaterdude_xx wrote:We're winning and Cousins has like...4 points? Wow.

The frontcourts have pretty much neutralized each other with some not-so-good play. It's a backcourt battle tonight.

Please put reke in.

Smart is running out the same lineup for WAY too long, we're exhausted and now the subs come in to lose the game

WE WON THE LAKERS BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

JT the next K9? Please.

Awesome game pretty much all around.

Why can't they treat every game like a home game against the Lakers? I swear they're a different team when it's the Lakers at home

To Chuck



Excellent game....

And a here here to that lady ringing the cowbell outside of the arena, and running around all the Lakers fans.

Chuck was playing like a boss.

First quarter aside, this was the first game all season where players were asked to do what they are actually good at. Tyreke the main ballhandler in the starting lineup. Cousins as the first option from the 12-14 foot area. Brooks as a third gun. Salmons attacking but not forcing. Thornton coming in and attacking off of curls, catching and shooting, and some pick and rolls. Isaiah being the main ballhandler off the bench. There was balance, chemistry, and everything just flowed naturally.

Looks like Smart has found a rotation that works. Brooks/Tyreke/Salmons/JT/Cousins -> IT/Thornton/JJ/Robinson/Hayes -> Tyreke/Thornton/Salmons/JT/Cousins to close. Can't say I'm too dissatisfied with that type of rotation as long as the starters get majority of the minutes.

Only problem I had was Smart sticking with the bench in the fourth quarter for faaaar too long. The closing lineup should be in no later than the 6 minute mark. The bench did their job, but almost lost the lead away. Tyreke should have played more than 28 minutes, he was having a marvelous game on both ends.

And how about Demarcus coming in at the end and beating Pau Gasol over and over and over again to close out the game for us. That, my friends, is our future right there. Just got to stay on the court kid.

They need this type of effort and attitude EVERY game not just with elite teams in the NBA. If they can find some balance and consistency, they can change things around quickly but I'm not holding my breath.

All in all, it was good to see the W for us.

Nice win, but let's not act like the sky is staying calmly up there yet. As far as I'm concerned, it's still steadily falling until we see this with any consistency.

With that said, there were some legitimately good things tonight. It wasn't just making hard shots, and when it was, it was guys in rhythm after having gotten good shots.

We were really quite good defensively too. Better than the box score would indicate. I'd guess about 80% of Kobe's field goals were very well defended. Take those away, and you've got an outstanding defensive game statistically.

Over all, nice to see, but we've seen games like this in the past. We have yet to see it with any kind of consistency.

I'm not holding my breath for any consistency. Our home games against the Lakers for the last how-many-years have been ultra-competitive, yet we still finish .200-.300 on the season. Hawes used to get like 30 and 10 against the Lakers then be like 6 and 2 the next game. There's just something in the culture of the organization right now that cannot bring the focus and effort required to utilize the talent on the roster consistently. I do think that many of us overvalue the roster sometimes and think we're more talented than we really are. After having the same players for the last few years, you have to blame the players at some point. But I think most people can agree that we're at least more talented than our record suggests.