Lakers vs. Nuggets 11/30/12 10:30 ET (ESPN)

[SashAlex]

Is it his first career 3FG?

He hit the first one against the Cavs in the ECF, Game 6. It was an elbow three. Don't know why I remember it that well. Probably because I was rooting for the Magic !?

What about the game, just woke up. But when I looked at the box score and saw Jamison's and Meeks's production I was like - WhAaat??!

Il definitely download the game. It seems like the offense starts going.

[3gbrrrfkyt]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMRREmEiclU[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHC6KLYcCVM&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

[myersia]

I posted this in the trade thread. think we would consider Pau for Gallinari and Wilson Chandler?

Denver gets better
Lakers get more spacing and shooting.

Denver

Lawson/Miller
Iggy/Brewer
Hamilton/
Faried/Koufos
Pau/Mcgee

LA
Nash/Duhon/Morris/Blake
Kobe/Meeks
Artest/W. Chandler/Ebanks
Gallinari/Jamison
Dwight/Hill

[ROballer]

Don't think so....both Gallo and Chandler have long contracts

If that wasn't the case,I'd jump on such a deal.....don't know if Denver would though

[timdunkit]

I think Pau will fit in fine if he gets more aggressive on the PnR and stars rolling to the basket or attacking the basket after he gets the ball on the pop. Despite having a bad night, his passing was phenomenal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUwmy26OC8o[/youtube]

[AcecardZ]

I think Pau will fit in fine if he gets more aggressive on the PnR and stars rolling to the basket or attacking the basket after he gets the ball on the pop. Despite having a bad night, his passing was phenomenal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUwmy26OC8o[/youtube]

Pau would be fine if he got more aggressive but what have you seen that leads you to believe it's going to happen?

[Kalidogg24]

Really fun game to watch.
Gotta give props to D'antoni. He really boosted Jamison, Meeks, and DUHON's confidence.

Seemed like they were falling into the abyss under Brown and pretty much
with this new system got shock therapy overnight.

Would love to see Jodie Meeks in the 3 point shootout this year and maybe throw in Antwan in there as well.

Dwight was the real Manimal last night and that three was a very fitting way to close.
28,20,3 blocks, and an endless amount of altered shots. MANIMAL.

As for Denver I really do not know what is going on over there.
Koufos and Mozgov getting more burn than Javale Mcgee is mind boggling to me.
He must of pissed off George Karl during training camp or something.

[Michael Lucky]

yeah once i looked at the minutes breakdown I had a hard time figuring why Javale only got 17 minutes. Obviously there are a ton of issues with his game and his head(mostly this), but there's no reason why Mozgov and Koufos should be getting 31 minutes between them. They are simply terrible.

[timdunkit]

I think Pau will fit in fine if he gets more aggressive on the PnR and stars rolling to the basket or attacking the basket after he gets the ball on the pop. Despite having a bad night, his passing was phenomenal.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUwmy26OC8o[/youtube]

Pau would be fine if he got more aggressive but what have you seen that leads you to believe it's going to happen?

He's done it in spurts.

But he's a very good "glue" guy to have in this offense. He needs more touches in the post but I don't think he can handle creating from their consistently like he used to.

When he is in PnR situations with Kobe, he is nearly always left wide open or with a bit of room. When he gets the ball, he should be attacking the basket. When he does, it forces Dwights man to help (leaving Dwight for the lob) or the wing player to help (leaving an open shooter). Pau's is an excellent passer and he finds the open man.

The problem is, too many times he settles for that mid range jumper. Even though he's decent at hitting it, it shouldn't be his man option.

On the defensive end, he's slow on the PnR and he does get exposed sometimes 1 on 1. But he's pretty good on the glass and he challenges shots at the rim.

[Slava]

Credit has to be given to mike and his he has got players acting instinctively rather than not know their roles like with Mike brown. He singled out Meeks that he should shoot every time he touches the ball and he's been doing exactly that so far to great effect

[semi-sentient]

Impressive showing on offense last night. Unfortunately we're not going to shoot that well most nights. I'd hate to think that we're becoming like the old Magic which relied heavily on their outside game, but I guess I can't complain too much since we're at least showing that we can be a 3-point threat. Jamison and Meeks are extremely inconsistent though so it's still a concern. Are they going to freeze up in the playoffs?

Defensively we still have a lot of work to do. Guards are getting to the paint way too easily. Kobe needs to play smarter, and I'm not sure what Meeks deal is. I guess he's just not a smart defensive player because he continually gets beat. Howard's defense has been spectacular for the most part. He does a great job of erasing our guards mistakes, although that has to be a concern as it could lead to him getting into foul trouble.

Pau and Jamison might as well not even be out there defensively. When they were in the game together it was just a layup drill for the Nuggets. I'd like to see Pau, Hill, and Ebanks playing together more to help mitigate guard penetration.

I also don't understand the benching of Ebanks. He can help this team. Metta is playing 35.5 MPG which is about 7 or 8 too many, and if we're serious about improving defensively then we'll give him some burn. Morris is already playing solid defense, so pairing him with Hill and Ebanks would help Pau out more than anything.

Duhon has played surprisingly well on the offensive end. He's going to work nicely in this system and has already shown his worth as a PNR guard. He definitely plays more under control than Morris and his shooting has been no worse, but he's pretty slow defensively. It'll be interesting to see what happens once Nash comes back. Will D'Antoni roll with Morris or Duhon? Will he do what's right and bury Blake deep on the bench?

Lastly, Howard's FT shooting needs some serious work. The guy has shot around 60% for most of his career so he needs to at least get back to that. Shooting 47% is inexcusable and pathetic. Too bad we can't fine him each month that he shoots below 50%.

At least we're showing what we're capable of, albeit in flashes. We can play defense when everyone is focused, and we can run teams out of the building when our offense is clicking. We'll make the leap from good to elite once we start doing both more consistently. I'm still a huge proponent of moving Pau to the bench though so that his minutes next to Howard are minimized. As inconsistent as Jamison is I think he'd do a much better job of playing the stretch 4 role. This move would do wonders for our offense, and we might actually improve defensively as Hill now has a role on the team, which is to relieve Jamison and play next to Pau. A Pau/Jamison FC is beyond pathetic defensively and should never happen, especially with Meeks and Duhon in the backcourt. That's all-time bad defense right there.

[timdunkit]

It seems to me that the Lakers guards don't try defensively, unless they see it as a challenge. Kobe started out being really good defensive stance against Igoudola. But as the game wore on, he became less interested and MWP goes through the same thing.

It's not the best way to play defense because it builds bad habits but it seems to me the Lakers will rely on their offense to win and get stops when they feel they need them. The wierd thing about Meeks is that he looks like he's trying all out on defense. It's just he's not quick enough and needs to give his man a bit more room.

I'm fine with us turning like the Magic because we have something the Magic don't (Steve Nash and Kobe Bryant). As far as playing like a team, good spacing and relying our stars to create open 3pt shots for everyone else is a good system. When it get's ugly, we'll always have the option of letting DWight/Gasol go 1 on 1 in the post and Kobe doing his thing. But when Steve comes back, I expect that to happen less because Steve will be able to find everyone good shots on a consistent basis.

I believe Kobe made this point early season, an offensive scheme is to help the role players find their shots in the offense. Stars are able to get theirs no matter what the scheme.

[Michael Lucky]

for all the talk about them being bad on D, I find it ironic that the Lakers are now ranked 6th or 7th in defensive efficiency depending on the source, and have gotten better on that end since D'Antoni has arrived. Maybe our expectations of what is good D is really too high. Besides I see every team give a ton of easy buckets, and yeah that even includes the bulls, it's just they play at a much slower pace that it doesn't happen as often or we simply don't notice it as much.

[dockingsched]

advanced stats not only show that the lakers are a good defensive team (7th), but that they're a good offensive team (8th) and have played like an 11-5 team, 5th best in the league.

[semi-sentient]

for all the talk about them being bad on D, I find it ironic that the Lakers are now ranked 6th or 7th in defensive efficiency depending on the source, and have gotten better on that end since D'Antoni has arrived. Maybe our expectations of what is good D is really too high. Besides I see every team give a ton of easy buckets, and yeah that even includes the bulls, it's just they play at a much slower pace that it doesn't happen as often or we simply don't notice it as much.

I wouldn't put too much stock into our offensive/defensive ratings this early in the seasons. There are a couple of factors that slant those ratings in our favor:

1) Simply put, we've had a very easy schedule with 11 home games and 5 road games. That helps our ratings both ways since teams tend to play much better at home than on the road.

2) The average offensive ranking of the teams we've played is 14th out of 30, so mostly average offensive teams. We've played 5 teams that have had a top 10 ranked offense, and against 3 of those teams our defense was pretty good (Clippers - 7th, Spurs - 5th, Nets - 6th). Against the other two teams (Grizzles - 4th, Nuggets - 9th) our defense looked pretty awful. So while we're ranked 7th currently I think we've played slightly above average defense overall given the competition.

3) The average defensive rating of the teams we've played is 17th out of 30, so mostly below average defensive teams. Again, we've played 5 teams that had a top 10 ranked defense. Against two of those teams our offense looked good (Clippers - 10th, Nets - 8th). Against the other 3 teams we struggled (Spurs - 5th, Grizz - 2nd, Pacers - 1st). Given that we're ranked 8th that's not too impressive, especially since 4 out of those 5 games were at Staples (and in general we've had a really home heavy schedule).


Like I said earlier, the potential is there to be great on both ends. Having Howard alone gives us the potential to be a top 3 defensive team in the league if our guards start playing smarter and with more enthusiasm. Give Hill and Ebanks more burn off the bench and it'll only help.

Offense requires a bit more time to develop chemistry so I'm more forgiving there. When it's all said and done I think we'll be pretty nasty. It's hard for me to imagine us not having a top 5 ranked offense by seasons end given that we stay relatively healthy, and to be quite honest we should have the #1 offense if Nash plays the rest of the way.

[semi-sentient]

advanced stats not only show that the lakers are a good defensive team (7th), but that they're a good offensive team (8th) and have played like an 11-5 team, 5th best in the league.

... but we're still 8-8 after having a home heavy schedule against average (at best) teams. We haven't looked any better with Nash so I don't think his injury has had a huge impact either way.

[dockingsched]

they have a middle of the road SOS (ranked 14th). they're ranked 7th in SRS (SOS + pt differential).


and really nash hasn't even had a practice under d'antoni here in LA, so i put 0 value in how they looked with him in the pre-season.

[Anklebreaker702]

Got a chance 2 watch the game. Howard was a freakin beast! Liked how the team looked. I'll be glad when the main Steve gets back. I'm still liking the way D-Mo & Meeks are playing though

[timdunkit]

for all the talk about them being bad on D, I find it ironic that the Lakers are now ranked 6th or 7th in defensive efficiency depending on the source, and have gotten better on that end since D'Antoni has arrived. Maybe our expectations of what is good D is really too high. Besides I see every team give a ton of easy buckets, and yeah that even includes the bulls, it's just they play at a much slower pace that it doesn't happen as often or we simply don't notice it as much.

I know it seems like a bailout answer, but Gasol/Hill/Dwight do a really job of contesting shots at the rim (and they do it without fouling). Our defensive strength is our ability to protect right at the rim.

That might be the primary reason why the DRTG is pretty good.

But within the game you can see our wing players are constantly making mistakes. There getting blown out, leaving shooters wide open and sometimes leaving the bigs helpless.