Slava wrote:I think the series will be decided on offense. Lakers need to run and gun, shoot up a higher volume on threes than they are used to and hope to make enough of them to even the margins. There’s no hope of containing Denver, they’re the better half court team.
Yeah, LA's only real pathway is to win the transition battle. They're going to get bullied on the offensive glass and won't be anywhere near as good in the halfcourt, so they need to be connecting from downtown and going nuts in transition. They WERE 8th in the league in 3P%, but 28th in 3PA, which is a large problem for them.
Seasonally, they were at 115.9 ORTG, which was 15th in the league (and were 16th on D). Denver, at 118.5, was 5th (and also 8th on D). That disparity is going to be a problem, especially if Reaves doesn't go as bonkers as he did last year.
In the WCFs last year, LA posted 117.9 (+3.4 over their RS performance)... and permitted 124.3 from Denver.
It'll be interesting to see. LA is going to need a lot of contributions from guys other than Lebron and AD to get this done, because they're sitting in a bad offensive hole and Lebron isn't even in his mid-30s anymore. There's only so much he can dial it up.
As a Laker, he has not generally been able to summon a lot of dominant scoring performances. His passing has been excellent and he's had a couple of mid/high 20s type of series, but by and large he doesn't have that top-tier nuclear mode anymore. Further, he's averaged sub-59% TS in both of the last two postseasons, which is of some concern going up against an offensive titan like the Nuggets.
It's also worth noting that one of Lebron's weaknesses remains FT shooting. He's going to give up a lot of points at the line. Not to a Shaq-like degree, but he's shot < 70% from the line in 3 of his last 6 postseasons, and that's going to be something to watch, as it meaningfully undercuts his efficiency. He was also in Cleveland the last time he was able to summon .400+ FTr on a postseason; he doesn't have that in him anymore at the age of 39, unsurprisingly, which also hurts his upper bound as a scoring threat in the playoffs.
Obviously, there's much to be made about his relative health going into THIS postseason.
Circling back to the team level. LA is the worst offensive rebounding team in the league and they post the 3rd-lowest 3pt volume in the league. Both of these things are going to fight them pretty hard in this series, particularly since Denver is quite good at both.
Of course, we'll have to watch the games. Lebron might just go bonkers. Or AD might go bonkers. Or Reaves might just replicate what he did last year, so who knows? 2020 was pretty impressive, and Lebron was about a 28/10/10 player on 60.5% TS / 126 ORTG in the WCFs against Denver last season.