Will the Lakers win with Mike Brown?

[manvir_samra]

I'm hoping they do but I still wish phil never left.

[ROballer]

This year,no..even with some trades,I don't think it's possible

Next year after a full training camp I think we have a shot(assuming we tweak some things)

[H00PDREAMS]

This year no. Next year WCF or his job

[dirtymike]

Maybe...if we get a point guard!

[EiRON]

If we are able to find a replacement in the PG and SF spots then yes. He has a very good chance of winning.

[tsherkin]

The team needs to improve its depth; I don't think Mike Brown is harming the squad. I think he may be over-playing Kobe a little, but for the team to win, that's necessary and they aren't bad enough that he's harming draft slot, for example.

I miss Phil, but Brown is doing a good job, the team just isn't good enough to compete because of the roster. We'll see how things play out going forward.

[LAKESHOW]

ive seen this movie before. weve had several coaches of his "type" or "style of play" or "defensive mindedness". and the bottom line when weve had these "type" of coaches, weve STOCKED THE SHELF with players. thats the LAKER way, continually bring the ammunition for the coach to work with.

so who knows if he can win it or not, but i know one thing, we definitely do not have a "stocked shelf" to work with.

give the guy some ammunition after this trade deadline, then we should start "the clock" on his tenure.

[Wavy Q]

Mike Brown's offensive scheme isn't very innovative or spectacular but then again neither are the players, i don't blame Brown for the teams struggles on the road, Brown can't make the role players hit their open shots.

[tsherkin]

Mike Brown's offensive scheme isn't very innovative or spectacular but then again neither are the players, i don't blame Brown for the teams struggles on the road, Brown can't make the role players hit their open shots.

I've heard a lot of talk about his scheme, but offensive schemes don't need to be tricky or complicated. I think people are just accustomed to the triangle in all its on-the-fly intricacy.

Most teams get by on a steady diet of pick-and-roll, post-ups if you've got the players, floppy action and flex cuts and then dribble-penetration to shake things up. Beyond that, good ball movement around the perimeter, into and out of the post, and then cuts and/or off-ball screens. Brown touches upon a lot of the basics; Drew and Pau get touches, Kobe gets touches of various sorts...

Their offense would look a lot better if the roleplayers would just hit open shots, it IS that simple.

[Leor_77]

The problem is that I'm not sure how much I should be putting on him and how much I should be putting on the fact that we have no bench, PG and SF. I still believe that Adelman was and is a better coach than MB.

[Sedale Threatt]

Mike Brown's offensive scheme isn't very innovative or spectacular but then again neither are the players, i don't blame Brown for the teams struggles on the road, Brown can't make the role players hit their open shots.

I'm torn on this.

More than anything I believe players win games, so I'm always going to put the fault there first. Especially in this case, where we have so many drastic deficiencies -- shooting, depth, an almost total lack of talent at two positions. No coach can make up for that.

At the same time, I watch this team try to execute and I'm thoroughly unimpressed. We don't seem to play with any purpose or specific idea of what we're trying to do. How many possessions do we not even start to run a play until the shot clock is half gone? Lethargy personified.

I've got a good friend who is a Laker fan and also an assistant coach for the Division I team in the city I live, and he's got the same general impression. I believe his exact quote was something along the lines of, I can't stand watching Mike Brown's offense.

So while talent is problems A, B and C, I havne't seen anything from him strategically to be impressed with in this regard.

[tsherkin]

Again, this is a non-issue.

Mike Brown's sets are not causing the Lakers to get bad shots; that would be visibly apparent were it the case. The Lakers are not sucking because they get nothing but low-efficiency, contested shots.

They get tons of open looks, but pretty much Troy Murphy and Steve Blake are the only players hitting open perimeter shots created by the offense, apart from Kobe. The bigs are doing their thing, but they can only GET the ball so often when Fisher, Barnes, Metta and Kapono suck as hard as they have thus far this season.

You cannot put that on Mike Brown, and it's recorded for posterity in hours of video footage. This is irrefutable, it's not actually a debatable point. So there's really no point in expending energy questioning the validity and efficacy of Brown's scheme until and unless those guys start hitting WIDE THE HELL OPEN jumpers.

In Kapono's case, it's kind of mystifying, given how successful he has been elsewhere in his career in the same role. It's basically a conjunction of epic slumps across 4 players and it's problematic only BECAUSE 4 players have been so ineffective at the same time.

EDIT: Furthermore, teams aren't defending the Lakers the same way that they would were those guys legitimate threats. Watching this team execute, it's painfully clear that the incompetence of the 4 main problem shooters is a big part of this, and the absence of competent secondary ball-handling is killing this team. As another poster said, talent is problems A, B and C; this lack of depth is harming the Lakers' ability to run even their simplistic offense, but there's no offensive system out there that could actually overcome this.

Hells ya, Rick Adelman is a better coach than Mike Brown, but that would mean exactly squat here because you still have to hit open shots with your feet set and, at the end of the day, THAT is what the Lakers aren't doing right now.

[Sedale Threatt]

As I said, there are problems with this team that no coach could fix, certainly not Mike Brown.

The instances that specifically bother me, for example, are when Bynum's in with the second unit. Instead of getting the ball up court in a reasonably urgent manner and pumping the ball inside so we can run the offense through him, we waste SO many possessions. Loaf around with the ball, waste half the shot clock, and if we do decide to get the ball to him, he's only five or six seconds to work with.

This happens way, way more often than it should, no matter what our personnel deficiencies are. You can still play with urgency and purpose, instead of the lethargy we succumb to in those moments, which unfortunately are not isolated.

[tsherkin]

I think the ennui of a team that's so accustomed to winning cannot be turned around so quickly by a new coach in a season when they aren't winning in the same fashion as they expect. You cannot expect miracles from Mike Brown with players as are on this roster and it's not like there are some really bright minds handling the ball all of the time.