The LeBron James - 21-22 Regular Season Thread - New Thread Soon Part 2

[Mos_Heat]

Just call Presti and pray he will take Westbrook with 27' pick, swap in 28 and 3 2nd rounders

OKC has a problem of being too good for a tanking team. They are getting thoroughly outtanked by the others. They aren't trying to risk raising their floor by accident.

Current Westbrook is not a floor raiser by any means. Just put him in the line up with traditional big and your offense will be bad enough for you to lose

[McBubbles]

If you're talking about the 2019-2020 season they were far better than just middle of the pack offensively. IIRC they were a top 5 offense before the bubble.

3rd even! 113.0 0RTG behind Mavs and Houston.

The Lakers? They finished the regular season at 11th in offensive efficiency and they hung around 15-20 for most of the season.

In the 60 games from 22/10/19 to 30/3/20 before the bubble, the Lakers were 3rd in offence, 3rd in defence and on pace to win 64 games for the season. Their defence in the 11 bubble games was 4th ranked but their offence dropped to 29th while they played at a 37 win pace in that timeframe that tanked their overall offensive rating overall from 3rd to 11th.

Also I think you're just remembering the last part of the season. They were 15th - 20th for the last part of the season in offence, but were top 10 for most of it.

October - 10th
November - 4th
December - 8th
January - 8th
February - 7th
March (Pre-Bubble) - 7th
March (Bubble Begins) - 19th
July (one game) - 15th
August - 19th

Although just looking at that the month by month ratings it doesn't actually seem like they'd ever get to as high or 3rd or as low as 28th, but that was in fact the case for those stretches.

[Slava]

Just call Presti and pray he will take Westbrook with 27' pick, swap in 28 and 3 2nd rounders

Presti will probably take him outright without picks to hit the salary floor and put a decent facade for the tank operation, considering his status there. The problem for the Lakers would be not receiving any pieces they can use. unless they can get something like Favors, Muscala and Williams in the deal.

They will get huge TPE though. So they could use it on someone like Dragic or Eric Gordon. Pelinka would never do it, though. He lacks any imagination with this stuff

True that, I don't think Pelinka lacks for imagination but the Russ experiment lasts until LeBron wants it, which might mean until the summer.

[Slava]

Something the Lakers film room podcast brought up, Avery Bradley's on-off numbers look to be on the rise now that Bazemore and Jordan are out of the rotation.

[Heej]

So is Monk earning a playoff rotation spot for you guys? And do you trust him to start or do we need an upgrade at sg

THT played well tonight, hoping he can up his value and we can move him

Currently think I would play:

Russ, Monk, Ariza, Lebron, AD
Nunn, Reaves, Melo, Dwight

Avery/THT next up

I see Monk as a baby JR so in my mind he's always been a key piece that needed to figure it out for the Lakers to go anywhere

[thebigbird]

So is Monk earning a playoff rotation spot for you guys? And do you trust him to start or do we need an upgrade at sg

THT played well tonight, hoping he can up his value and we can move him

Currently think I would play:

Russ, Monk, Ariza, Lebron, AD
Nunn, Reaves, Melo, Dwight

Avery/THT next up

I see Monk as a baby JR so in my mind he's always been a key piece that needed to figure it out for the Lakers to go anywhere

Funny you say that because Monk reminds me so much of JR when he first came to Cleveland lol. LeBron plays so well with that run and gun type that has supreme confidence and is never afraid to throw up shots.

[colts18]

Neither LeBron or Melo contested one shot at the basket all the game. And I can't recall LeBron jumping on defense for a contest or a rebound all game. The LeBron/Melo at the 5 lineups are a complete disaster defensively. That was one of the worst defensive efforts I've ever seen in a game. The Lakers are lucky they pulled that game. The TWolves doubled the Lakers Rebounding output: 56 rebounds to 28 Lakers rebounds.

I told you guys that the LeBron/Melo at the 5 lineups don't work. Their effort level on defense and rebounding is non-existent. You can't have big men who won't rotate, contest shots, or box out.

Even though he got 2 rebounds, I liked Reeves effort on the glass. He was noticeably contesting almost every rebound, offense or defense. I saw him everywhere on my screen. The best 0 points, 2 rebounds performance I've seen.

[loveandbeer]

Less Melo, more Dwight / Reaves.

Monk has been playing extremely well. He's now at 61% TS on the season. Really a gifted scorer. If he could just learn to play a modicum of D...

[Heej]

Gotta say man picking up Monk in my fantasy team 2 weeks ago has paid off well lol

[mcraft]

This video showed up in my YouTube feed this morning. It’s long, 33 minutes, but I thought it was pretty good.

Watch on YouTube

[Mos_Heat]

So is Monk earning a playoff rotation spot for you guys? And do you trust him to start or do we need an upgrade at sg

THT played well tonight, hoping he can up his value and we can move him

Currently think I would play:

Russ, Monk, Ariza, Lebron, AD
Nunn, Reaves, Melo, Dwight

Avery/THT next up

Monk would be awesome as a 3rd guard in rotation, the problem is he's arguable the best guard on the team

[LukaTheGOAT]

Read on Twitter

Don't think we can ask for much more from Lebron, no matter how much we wish he were a bit more active as a rebounder or rim-protector at times. He has completely upped his play since AD has been out, and he already all-nba level impact before AD went out. I don't mind him settling for jumpers during the RS, as I'm sure he can't be consistently in attack mode.

[PistolPeteJR]

The Jazz just took a flier on House. I really don't get why the Lakers didn't.

Also, apparently the Lakers silently explored trading Russ lol.

[SeattleJazzFan]

lebron averaged 9.3 rebs and 1.5 blks per game in December (which is when he started playing the 5) but he doesn't box out, go for rebounds or contest shots at the rim.

for perspective, the 1.5 blocks would be good for 10th overall in the league and the 9.3 rebs would be good for 13th. And he did this all while dropping 30 ppg in the month and carrying his team offensively.

and he's 37. 19th year.

good gracious. this board. the standards this dude gets held to - even as a 37 year old in his 19th year just make me smh and don't give me much hope for the collective intelligence of our society.

[Slava]

Apparently looking to dump DeAndre and Bazemore to open up roster spots.

Watch on YouTube

[nzahir]

Apparently looking to dump DeAndre and Bazemore to open up roster spots.

Watch on YouTube

Spots for who?

Stanley is 1 that makes some sense

But we need 2 way guys

House would have been nice

[Slava]

Apparently looking to dump DeAndre and Bazemore to open up roster spots.

Watch on YouTube

Spots for who?

Stanley is 1 that makes some sense

But we need 2 way guys

House would have been nice

Bro, buyout season hasn’t even begun yet. My guess is that they’ll try to keep 2 spots open until after the trade deadline. That’s one of Pelinka’s skills, working with players agents to get these deals done on the margins.

[zimpy27]

Read on Twitter

Don't think we can ask for much more from Lebron, no matter how much we wish he were a bit more active as a rebounder or rim-protector at times. He has completely upped his play since AD has been out, and he already all-nba level impact before AD went out. I don't mind him settling for jumpers during the RS, as I'm sure he can't be consistently in attack mode.

Nice to see Cousins rising

[zimpy27]

Apparently looking to dump DeAndre and Bazemore to open up roster spots.

Watch on YouTube

Spots for who?

Stanley is 1 that makes some sense

But we need 2 way guys

House would have been nice

Bro, buyout season hasn’t even begun yet. My guess is that they’ll try to keep 2 spots open until after the trade deadline. That’s one of Pelinka’s skills, working with players agents to get these deals done on the margins.

Collison could be one guy. Another guy could be Kenrich.

And yeah the buyout season is coming up. Though I don't know of what buyout candidates would be useful this season.

[falcolombardi]

low key i am starting to think lebron is actually going to win scoring title

even his bad games are ending like 30~ points nights, although is bad for lakers chances od, well, doing anythingh in playoffs (championships look impossible) that they need 30 points lebron to even stay afloat

Without AD though that's to be expected. Its not like they have role players they can expect to get hot from 3 and put up 25 on a random night. LeBron scoring 30-35 is good because it means he is involved and taking his shots while being somewhat efficient. Not like he's out there going 13-33 to get his 30 lately.

i mean more in the sense that even with lebron scoring so well the lakers remain mediocre because of their lack of shooters and defenders ( their roster basically makes it a "pick one and only one of those two things" situation)

compare to warriors who can beat miami with curry scoring 9 points in a off Night because of their strong defense and is Night and day