lakerz12 wrote:Mamba Mentality wrote:I’ve been team Vogel from the start, but I think the time has come for the Lakers FO to fire him. The team clearly isn’t responding to him. This roster is beyond trash but I still find it hard to believe that we’re 4 games under .500 with Lebron and AD.
Why make this comment without acknowledging that LeBron has missed 17 games...and AD has missed 21 games.
"with Lebron and AD" makes it sound like the Lakers have actually had them...
That should come as no surprise to anyone, especially the Lakers front office. When you build a team with "championship aspirations" around two superstars that are old (LeBron) and frail (AD), you need to plan for them to miss a significant number of games.
Instead, the Lakers surrounded them with a roster full of min contract, over the hill, ring chasers - and one max contract, over the hill, ring chaser.
Both teams were on the second night of a back-to-back. Laker fans make a big deal about how they were exhausted after "doing battle with" MIL the night before. They gave up 131 points and got blown out by 15. It's not like they actually put up much of a fight.
POR also got blown out (by ORL) the night before and only has 9 active players on their roster, many who would normally be 3rd stringers, if they were even on an NBA roster.
The difference is POR has a lot of young legs, the Lakers really only have THT and Reaves. Even LAL's rookie is "old" (for a rookie). I was surprised to see that in spite of being in his 5th NBA season, Dennis Smith Jr. is only 6 months older than Austin Reaves.
The Blazers didn't play anyone over the age of 28 and played 4 players (21, 22, 20, 21) that are at least a year younger than Reeves.
The difference in the game came down to effort. The Lakers certainly have a huge advantage in talent, shot .554 from the field and .459 from deep (compared to .472, .313 for POR) and still lost. The Blazers had 15 steals and 11 offensive rebounds, compared to 7 steals and 3 offensive rebounds. Based purely in effort, the Blazers ended up with 15 more FGA than the Lakers. And that was the difference in the game.
Everyone knows that Westbrook is a bad fit, but that's only part of the Lakers poor roster construction. Can't blame this on on Russ. Even their role players are a poor fit for what that team needs. Pelinka chose to go for the "veteran" big names over young guys who are hungry and willing to play hard on every possession. Combine that with LeBron and AD constantly taking off plays and the result isn't surprising.
